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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Thames sketchbooks c.1804-14 > Thames, from Reading to Walton ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Horse Ferry, with a ?Saxon Church Tower at the Left: ?Sutton Courtenay 1805

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Horse Ferry, with a ?Saxon Church Tower at the Left: ?Sutton Courtenay’ 1805
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
A Horse Ferry, with a ?Saxon Church Tower at the Left: ?Sutton Courtenay 1805
D05919
Turner Bequest XCV 15
Pencil on white wove paper, 259 x 367 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘15’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘XCV 15’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This was a right-hand page from the sketchbook. Hill notes that a closer view of the same subject (Tate D05924; Turner Bequest XCV 20) also belonged to the sketchbook. Listing the present drawing among the unidentified subjects from the book, he suggests that the church ‘might prove identifiable’1 and could belong to Sutton Courtenay (in which case it would be All Saints’).2 Drawings of the river scenery around Sutton Courtenay and nearby villages on the Thames towards Oxford including Culham and Clifton Hampden are in the Hesperides (2) sketchbook used at the same time (Tate D05485–D05904; D40637; D41506; Turner Bequest XCIV). However, here the church is so sketchily drawn, simply as a square outline, that it is difficult to confirm its identity.
1
Hill 1993, p.113.
2
Ibid., p.171.
Verso:
Blank. Laid down
David Blayney Brown
Febraury 2009

How to cite

‘A Horse Ferry, with a ?Saxon Church Tower at the Left: ?Sutton Courtenay 1805 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-horse-ferry-with-a-saxon-church-tower-at-the-left-sutton-r1129950, accessed 24 April 2024.