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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Scotland 1831 > Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Bowes Church; and a Sketch of Three Sailing Boats 1831

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Bowes Church; and a Sketch of Three Sailing Boats’ 1831 (Inside back cover of sketchbook)
Inside back cover of sketchbook
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Inside Back Cover:
Bowes Church; and a Sketch of Three Sailing Boats 1831
D41078
Turner Bequest
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 187 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Bowes’ top centre
Stamped in brown ‘CCLXVI’ top right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner used the inside back cover of this sketchbook on two separate occasions. At the centre of the page is a sketch of a building labelled ‘Bowes’. This depicts the church St Giles in the village of Bowes near Barnard Castle in County Durham. The view is from the south with a separate study of the east window. Turner included the church in his vignette illustration to volume 9 of Sir Walter Scott’s Poetical Works: Bowes Tower, circa 1832 (watercolour, Bowes Museum, UK),1 where it is again seen from the south.
The second sketch, drawn at the outer edge of the page with the book turned to the left, depicts three sailing boats seen bow on as they sail towards us. The only coastal subject in this sketchbook is the port of Liverpool (see folio 2 verso; D25765), so it is possible that this is the place depicted by the faint outlines of buildings seen behind the boats. The domed building may be the Town Hall, and the spires at the left may be St Nicholas, St George and St Thomas as seen in Turner’s sketch on folio 7 of this sketchbook (D25774).

Thomas Ardill
September 2009

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.429 no.1087.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Bowes Church; and a Sketch of Three Sailing Boats 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-bowes-church-and-a-sketch-of-three-sailing-boats-r1134296, accessed 25 April 2024.