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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Wales and Isle of Wight 1795-1800 > Isle of Wight Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Southampton: The Bargate 1795

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Southampton: The Bargate’ 1795
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 10 Recto:
Southampton: The Bargate 1795
D00416
Turner Bequest XXIV 10
Pencil on white wove paper, 264 x 204 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘TAYLOR | MASON’ on building left and ‘SADLER | GE’ on building right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘10’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘XXIV 10’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Southampton’s Bargate has been judged ‘probably the finest, and certainly the most complex, town gateway in Britain’.1 It formed the entrance to the town along the High Street from the north, though its surroundings, including the north wall in which it stood, have been demolished so that it survives as a mere traffic island. It was begun as a Norman structure (with a round-arched passageway) in about 1200, and its north front with pointed arch and canted projection, which Turner shows in this drawing, was added two centuries later. Turner did not use this study in any finished view.
1
Nikolaus Pevsner and David Lloyd, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, The Buildings of England, Harmondsworth 1967, p.533.
Verso:
Blank, except for a brief continuation in pencil of the drawing of Winchester Cathedral on folio 11 recto opposite (D00417), showing the niche and figure on the pinnacle of the gable above the west window; stamped in brown ink with Turner Bequest monogram.

Andrew Wilton
April 2012

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Southampton: The Bargate 1795 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-southampton-the-bargate-r1140993, accessed 25 April 2024.