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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > England and Wales Colour Studies c.1825 ... > Identified or Likely Subjects, Possibly ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Garrick's Villa and the Temple to Shakespeare at Hampton on the River Thames c.1828

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Garrick's Villa and the Temple to Shakespeare at Hampton on the River Thames’ c.1828
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Garrick’s Villa and the Temple to Shakespeare at Hampton on the River Thames c.1828
D25145
Turner Bequest CCLXIII 23
Watercolour on white wove paper, 355 x 507 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram below right of centre
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Ian Warrell noted this colour study as ‘stylistically associated’ with Turner’s Picturesque Views in England and Wales, and related its composition slightly tentatively to pencil sketches in the Isle of Wight sketchbook, used on the island in 1827 (Tate D20762, D20764; Turner Bequest CCXXVII 20, 21); indeed, the connection appears conclusive, and Eric Shanes has also accepted it.1
The subject, the house of actor David Garrick (1717–1779) from the 1750s and subsequently redeveloped for him in Palladian style by Robert Adam (1728–1792), faces south across the Thames south-west of Twickenham and Richmond upon Thames and north-west of Hampton Court Palace, with a porticoed rotunda as a garden feature on the riverbank below.2 This ‘Temple to Shakespeare’ appears above the river at the centre here, with the house pale among the trees to its right. The temple remains in good repar, but the house was damaged by fire in 2008.3 Despite Turner’s familiarity with the Thames in this area and his extensive depictions of nearby sites, sometimes in terms of their literary and historical associations,4 the pencil sketches and this colour study are the only identified explorations of the present subject.
A drawing elsewhere in this sketchbook formed the basis of another England and Wales-type colour study (Tate D25224; Turner Bequest CCLXIII 102). See also the introductions to the present subsection of identified but unrealised subjects and the overall England and Wales ‘colour beginnings’ grouping to which this work has been assigned.
1
Shanes 1997, pp.27, 95, 102, 104.
2
See text and early engravings at ‘Garrick’s Villa’, The Twickenham Museum, accessed 5 March 2013, http://www.twickenham-museum.org.uk/detail.asp?ContentID=287; see also Garrick’s Temple to Shakespeare, accessed 5 March 2013, http://www.garrickstemple.org.uk/.
3
‘In pictures: Garrick’s Villa fire’, BBC, accessed 5 March 2013, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/7690829.stm.
4
See David Hill, Turner on the Thames: River Journeys in the Year 1805, New Haven and London 1993.
Verso:
Blank, save for inscriptions: stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram above ‘CCLXIII 23’ towards bottom right; and in pencil ‘CCLXIII 23’ bottom right.

Matthew Imms
March 2013

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Garrick’s Villa and the Temple to Shakespeare at Hampton on the River Thames c.1828 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-garricks-villa-and-the-temple-to-shakespeare-at-hampton-on-r1144316, accessed 13 May 2026.