J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner Petworth House: Evening in the White Library ('After Dinner') 1827

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Petworth House: Evening in the White Library ('After Dinner')’ 1827
Petworth House: Evening in the White Library (‘After Dinner’) 1827
D22746
Turner Bequest CCXLIV 84
Gouache and watercolour on blue wove paper, 142 x 185 mm
Inscribed in red ink ‘239 | O.’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXLIV 84’ bottom right
Blind stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is one of a large group of separate studies, most of which were made in gouache and watercolour on blue paper, associated with a visit to Petworth House in West Sussex, the home of the third Earl of Egremont. For more information, see the Introduction to this section.
The setting for this evening scene featuring various loosely indicated figures has been identified as Petworth’s White Library,1 a well-used drawing room in which guests gathered both before and after dinner; for more information about Turner’s numerous studies of this room, see the entry for Tate D22678 (Turner Bequest CCXLIV 16). The chandeliers seen either side of the fireplace here most resemble the library as it is shown in a detailed gouache and watercolour by Mrs Percy Wyndham (c.1865, the Egremont collection).2 The backdrop is also quite similar to that shown in another of Turner’s studies of the room, D22668 (Turner Bequest CCXLIV 26). The broken brown watercolour marks seen in the background indicate the bookshelves that cover of the walls.
There is an unrelated watercolour study of trees, likely near Petworth, on the verso (D41419).

Elizabeth Jacklin
February 2019

1
Butlin, Luther and Warrell 1989, pp.142, 143, 176.
2
Reproduced in Christopher Rowell, Ian Warrell and David Blayney Brown, Turner at Petworth, exhibition catalogue, Petworth House, Petworth 2002, p.111.

How to cite

Elizabeth Jacklin, ‘Petworth House: Evening in the White Library (‘After Dinner’) 1827’, catalogue entry, February 2019, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2024, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/petworth-house-evening-in-the-white-library-after-dinner-r1209155, accessed 21 April 2026.