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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner House on the ?Tees 1831

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 35 Recto:
House on the ?Tees 1831
D25829
Turner Bequest CCLXVI 35
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 187 mm
Inscribed in blue ink by John Ruskin ‘35’ top right and ‘342’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXVI 35’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The set of steps shown in the middle of the sketch brought Turner down a steep wooded bank to this small house built onto the slope. The location is likely to be on the Tees between Egglestone Abbey and the junction with the River Greta, as the sketch appears in the sketchbook between drawings of these two places. The house is on two levels, with the upper level projecting forward on two pillars. Interestingly the building resembles Turner’s studies of his own rural retreat, Sandycombe Lodge. A page of studies of the house in the ‘Windmill and Lock’ sketchbook shows various projections of the house which reveal a similarly projecting section (Tate D08057, D08065; Turner Bequest CXIV 73a, 77a), although it is an open balcony unlike in the present sketch. Turner had by 1831 moved out of Sandycombe Lodge, but he may have been attracted to this house on the Tees because of its resemblance to it.

Thomas Ardill
September 2009

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘House on the ?Tees 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 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-house-on-the-tees-r1134196, accessed 28 March 2024.