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 Distant View of Salisbury from the North 1795

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Distant View of Salisbury from the North’ 1795
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 14 Recto:
Distant View of Salisbury from the North 1795
D00421
Turner Bequest XXIV 14b
Pencil on white wove paper, 129 x 204 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘<...> Salisbury from Old Sarum Entrenchment’ bottom right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘14’ bottom right (now very faint)
Stamped in black ‘XXIV B’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner seems to have had time only for a rapid note of the view of Salisbury from the height of Old Sarum, the Iron Age hill-fort to the north of the city, but this was clearly an ideal vantage point for one of the panoramic views he was making at this time for Walker’s Copper-Plate Magazine (see the entry on the view of Winchester on the upper half of this leaf, D00420; Turner Bequest XXIV 14a). Although he did not in fact use it in the 1790s, he referred to it much later when developing a watercolour for the series of Picturesque Views in England and Wales (Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum).1
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.398 no.836, reproduced.
Technical notes:
This is the lower half of a leaf which has been torn in two and since made up by a strip of paper, reconstituting the page to its full dimensions of 264 x 204 mm; the upper half (i.e. also part of folio 14 recto) is D00420 (Turner Bequest XXIV 14a).
Verso:
Blank; stamped in brown ink with Turner Bequest monogram.

Andrew Wilton
April 2012

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Distant View of Salisbury from the North 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-distant-view-of-salisbury-from-the-north-r1140998, accessed 03 May 2026.