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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Elevation of a House, Possibly a Design for Sandycombe Lodge c.1810-12

Sorry, no image is available of this artwork
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Elevation of a House, Possibly a Design for Sandycombe Lodge circa 1810–12
D41516
Pencil on white wove writing paper, 223 x 279 mm
Inscribed in pencil ‘P | 73’ bottom left upside down, ‘3’ top centre upside down, and by Turner ‘Glaucus. Scylla’ top left upside down
Stamped in black ‘[crown] | N•G | CXVIII – P’ top right upside down
Bequeathed by Henry Vaughan 1900
Provenance:
...
Henry Vaughan by 1878, and possibly by 1862
This previously unrecorded, very slight drawing occupies the centre of the sheet, and is inverted in relation to the drawing on the recto, and to the inscriptions on this side. It appears to represent a small two-storied building of two bays, with short single-story wings and a central vertical feature, probably a chimney. It is possibly a loose variation on the design of Turner’s Twickenham house, Sandycombe Lodge, which was under construction around 1812; see the Sandycombe and Yorkshire sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest CXXVII) and related drawings.1
Assuming this to be the case, a date of about 1810–12 is suggested, as the Liber Studiorum design, Glaucus and Scylla appearing on the recto (Tate D08170; Vaughan Bequest CXVIII P) – hence the inscription on this side – has been dated to the first half of the 1810s. The provenance is discussed in the entry for the recto.

Matthew Imms
August 2009

1
See also Patrick Youngblood, ‘The Painter as Architect: Turner and Sandycombe Lodge’, Turner Studies, vol.2, no.1, Summer 1982, pp.20–35.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Elevation of a House, Possibly a Design for Sandycombe Lodge c.1810–12 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2009, 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-elevation-of-a-house-possibly-a-design-for-sandycombe-lodge-r1131775, accessed 28 March 2024.