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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Plan and Visualisation of the Garden at Sandycombe Lodge, Twickenham c.1812-13

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 14 Verso:
Plan and Visualisation of the Garden at Sandycombe Lodge, Twickenham c.1812–13
D09075
Turner Bequest CXXIX 14 v
Pen and ink on white wove paper, 110 x 178 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The relationship of this sketch to Turner’s self-designed villa Sandycombe Lodge, built at Twickenham c.1812–131 was first noted by Andrew Wilton and Rosalind Mallord Turner.2 The plan appears to be a more advanced version of that sketched in the Sandycombe and Yorkshire sketchbook (Tate D08994; Turner Bequest CXXVII 21a). At the top of the plan is a pond, with a distinctive tear-drop peninsular also indicated in the Sandycombe and Yorkshire drawing. Below, right of the central axis, is a path leading from the house (which would be at the bottom of the present arrangement) past lawns and plantings on the left, to a small summerhouse, seat or pergola above the pond to the right. At the top left of the plan is a thumbnail pen and ink visualisation of the appearance of the garden from the house. We can make out the path, just to the right of the main axis as in the plan, and the pond in the distance, evidently imagined with a tree (probably a willow) growing on the peninsular.
Finberg mistakenly listed this as ‘page 14’ in addition to the previous blank leaf (D09074); it is in fact its verso, as described here. Following this folio, Finberg noted a ‘Leaf torn’. In fact half is still in situ.

David Hill
October 2008

1
For Turner and Sandycombe see Patrick Youngblood, ‘The Painter as Architect: Turner and Sandycombe Lodge’, Turner Studies, vol.2, no.1, Summer 1982, pp.20–35; James Hamilton, ‘Sandycombe Lodge’, in Evelyn Joll, Martin Butlin and Luke Herrmann (eds.), The Oxford Companion to J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 2001, p.279.
2
Wilton and Mallord Turner 1990, p.76.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Plan and Visualisation of the Garden at Sandycombe Lodge, Twickenham c.1812–13 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 2008, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-plan-and-visualisation-of-the-garden-at-sandycombe-lodge-r1146797, accessed 23 April 2024.