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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Midlands 1794-1802 > Matlock Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Southwell Minster: Part of the Exterior of the Chapter House 1794

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Southwell Minster: Part of the Exterior of the Chapter House’ 1794
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 33 Verso:
Southwell Minster: Part of the Exterior of the Chapter House 1794
D00244
Turner Bequest XIX 33a
Pencil on white wove paper, 181 x 111 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Minster was founded as a college of secular canons in the tenth century, and had become an important foundation by the twelfth century, though it was not elevated to the status of cathedral until 1884. The body of the church is eleventh-century Norman, with Early English rebuilding at the east end. It is particularly celebrated for the exquisite carving of the capitals of the late thirteenth-century polygonal Chapter House.
Turner seems never to have made a watercolour of this important structure, and no other drawings of Southwell by him have been indentified, except the study of the Western Gate on folio 29 recto (D00238). The present drawing was made with the page turned vertically.

Andrew Wilton
April 2012

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Southwell Minster: Part of the Exterior of the Chapter House 1794 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2012, 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-southwell-minster-part-of-the-exterior-of-the-chapter-house-r1140762, accessed 25 April 2024.