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

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.

Turner made two studies of Petworth’s Grand, or ‘Painted’, Staircase, the present sheet and D22771 (Turner Bequest CCXLIV 109), which shows the staircase from the west. It can also be glimpsed in the background of D22735 (Turner Bequest CCXLIV 73).

The Grand Staircase is on the east side of the house and boasts large windows and walls decorated on a grand scale with paintings by Louise Laguerre (1663–1721) of the myth of Prometheus and Pandora and other subjects. Of Turner’s two studies of the staircase, this one is the least focused on Laguerre’s paintings. It shows the top landing, with the view including a balustrade which was shortly afterwards replaced.1 Christopher Rowell has identified the framed painting shown on the right as Thomas Phillips’s equestrian portrait of the Prince Regent in hussar uniform attended by Colonel Charles Wyndham, Lord Egremont’s son, using the 1837 inventory of the house’s contents.2

Also glimpsed in this study is a shadowy figure passing through the door at the end of the landing.

Verso:

Blank, save for inscriptions: inscribed in pencil ‘35 | c’ near centre; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram and ‘CCXLIV 94’ bottom left.