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

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

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Barn and Gate of La Haye Sainte, Waterloo, from the South and the Tree where Sir Thomas Picton Fell 1817

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Barn and Gate of La Haye Sainte, Waterloo, from the South and the Tree where Sir Thomas Picton Fell’ 1817
Folio 21 Recto:
The Barn and Gate of La Haye Sainte, Waterloo, from the South and the Tree where Sir Thomas Picton Fell 1817
D12740
Turner Bequest CLX 21
Pencil on white wove paper, 150 x 94 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Ditto N’ bottom left
Inscribed by John Ruskin in ink ‘158’ bottom left, and ‘21’ bottom right, both descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CLX – 21’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
For Turner at Waterloo in 1817 see Introduction to this sketchbook and notes to folio 16 verso (D12731).
Here, with the page turned horizontally, and again on the verso (D12741), Turner has drawn the farm of La Haye Sainte from the south, from the opposite direction to his drawing on folio 20 verso opposite (D12739). The house, barn wall, gate and orchard are on the left of the road. On the right are the sandpit and tree mentioned in many accounts of the battle. For the death of Sir Thomas Picton see notes to folio 18 recto (D12734).
The artist Robert Hills (1769–1844) drew the farm from this angle but slightly further up the road during a visit to Waterloo in 1815. His drawing is annotated with an account of the use of the farm as a field hospital in which ‘4 or 500 amputations were performed’ and ‘knapsacks, shoes, hats, boots, caps’ were ‘strewed about by hundreds’.1 It was reproduced in aquatint in 1816.2

David Blayney Brown
June 2025

1
Bachrach 1991, p.35, pl.5; Luke Herrmann, ‘Robert Hills at Waterloo’, The Connoisseur, 1962, p.176.
2
Robert Hills, Sketches in Flanders and Holland, with some account of a Tour through parts of those Countries shortly after the Battle of Waterloo. In a Series of Letters to a Friend, 1816, pl.IX.

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘The Barn and Gate of La Haye Sainte, Waterloo, from the South and the Tree where Sir Thomas Picton Fell 1817’, catalogue entry, June 2025, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, June 2026, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/the-barn-and-gate-of-la-haye-sainte-waterloo-from-the-south-and-the-tree-where-sir-thomas-r1212108, accessed 31 July 2026.