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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Cassiobury Park and Harvest Pictures ... > Harvest Home Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Tonbridge Castle, Kent: Gilbert de Clare and the Keep from the Moat 1810

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Tonbridge Castle, Kent: Gilbert de Clare and the Keep from the Moat’ 1810
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 8 Recto:
Tonbridge Castle, Kent: Gilbert de Clare and the Keep from the Moat 1810
D05361
Turner Bequest LXXXVI 8
Pencil on white wove paper, 258 x 370 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Water ...’ lower right of centre
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘8’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘LXXXVI 8’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With a view of Somer Hill near Tonbridge on folio 19 (D05375), this is evidence of Turner’s likely use of this sketchbook in 1810. That summer he probably visited Somer Hill on his way to Sussex to visit his patron John Fuller at Rosehill Park. This sketch of Tonbridge Castle is taken from across the moat, beneath the wooded mound with the ruins of the castle keep, connected by a rampart to the thirteenth-century gatehouse known as Gilbert de Clare. See Introduction to this sketchbook for the suggestion that Turner took the sketchbook with him to Kent and Sussex in 1810 to collect more material for his harvest pictures, Harvest Home and Cassiobury Park; Reaping (Tate N00562, N04663).1
1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.128 nos. 209, 209a (pls.208, 209).
Verso:
Blank

David Blayney Brown
December 2009

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Tonbridge Castle, Kent: Gilbert de Clare and the Keep from the Moat 1810 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 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-tonbridge-castle-kent-gilbert-de-clare-and-the-keep-from-the-r1133592, accessed 20 April 2024.