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

This is one of a series of sketches relating to Sandycombe Lodge, Turner’s self-designed Twickenham house (see the Introduction to the sketchbook), occupying most of the pages between folio 73 verso (D08057) and folio 86 verso (D08083), and apparently made working inwards from the back of the book.

The present studies show a variation the broad, shallow ‘Type B’ type categorised by Patrick Youngblood (as discussed in the Introduction to the Sandycombe section); Turner shows a wide, shallow two-storey design with two slightly projecting segmented wings flanking a Diocletian (thermal) window in the basement on the east front overlooking the garden. The window is the only element directly incorporated into the house as built, which would feature a central block flanked by single-storey wings. Youngblood notes that this design with protruding end bays or wings and a central ‘grotto’ window bears comparison to Alexander Pope’s Thameside villa ‘as enlarged by Sir William Stanhope between 1760 and 1770’.1 (For Pope and his Twickenham associations see the Introduction to the Sandycombe section.)