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 Niton Church, Isle of Wight, from the South 1795

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Niton Church, Isle of Wight, from the South’ 1795
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 33 Recto:
Niton Church, Isle of Wight, from the South 1795
D00440
Turner Bequest XXIV 32
Pencil on white wove paper, 264 x 204 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Niton Church’ below subject centre and ‘Slate’ on roof
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘32’ bottom right (now faint)
Stamped in black ‘XXIV 32’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Niton is a village just inland from St Catherine’s Point, the southernmost tip of the Isle of Wight. The church, dating from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, is dedicated to St John the Baptist. No finished view of it by Turner is known, but he was later to paint in oils a scene at Niton, which he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1826 with the title View from the Terrace of a Villa at Niton, Isle of Wight, from Sketches by a Lady (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).1 The ‘Lady’ was Julia Gordon, formerly Bennet, who was to become a pupil of Turner’s in 1797, and with whom he maintained a friendship, as the painting shows, until the 1830s.
Dearden mentions an engraving of the old St. Catherine’s Lighthouse after ‘W. Turner’, but this does not seem to be connected with J.M.W. Turner or his Isle of Wight tour.
1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.144 no.234, pl.240.
Technical notes:
A large part of the bottom right corner of the sheet has been torn away and made up with off-white paper.
Verso:
Blank; stamped in brown ink with Turner Bequest monogram.

Andrew Wilton
April 2012

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Niton Church, Isle of Wight, from the South 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-niton-church-isle-of-wight-from-the-south-r1141018, accessed 26 April 2024.