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

This sketch, continuing across folio 74 recto (D08058), is the last of a series relating to Sandycombe Lodge, Turner’s self-designed Twickenham house (see the Introduction to the sketchbook), working in from the back of the sketchbook and occupying most of the pages from folio 86 verso (D08083).

Working in ink across the two pages, Turner shows a notional prospect of the site looking south, with the house (of the deep, narrow ‘Type A’ type categorised by Patrick Youngblood, as discussed in the Introduction to the Sandycombe section) to the west on the right and the garden stretching eastwards to the left. Patrick Youngblood has noted that such a topographical rendering of a building in its future setting is in line with ‘pictorial’ representations in contemporary pattern books and Royal Academy architectural drawings, and suggests Turner may have produced larger ideal prospects of the site, although none apparently survive.1

Across folios 75 verso and 76 recto (D08061, D08062) is a similar prospect in pencil, with no indication of the house. Possibly the latter was drawn on the spot, and this more sophisticated treatment developed from it later.