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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Midlands 1830 > Birmingham and Coventry Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Dudley: ?A Quarry and Woods, Probably on Wren's Nest Hill 1830

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Dudley: ?A Quarry and Woods, Probably on Wren's Nest Hill’ 1830
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 51 Verso:
Dudley: ?A Quarry and Woods, Probably on Wren’s Nest Hill 1830
D22420
Turner Bequest CCXL 51a
Pencil on white wove paper, 110 x 68 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page of slight sketches, made with the page turned vertically, appears to show two or three aspects of a wooded hillside, rather than Finberg’s suggested ‘studies of skies’;1 the arch form towards the bottom is perhaps the entrance to a mine tunnel, perhaps indicating limestone workings on Wren’s Nest Hill, north of Dudley.
The sketches between folios 50 recto and 54 recto (D22417–D22425) all seem to be of or looking from the hill. Compare the sequence in the contemporary Kenilworth sketchbook (Tate D22085–D22090; Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 57–59a). For other views of Dudley, see under folio 39 recto (D22395).

Matthew Imms
August 2013

1
Finberg 1909, II, p.740.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Dudley: ?A Quarry and Woods, Probably on Wren’s Nest Hill 1830 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2013, 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-dudley-a-quarry-and-woods-probably-on-wrens-nest-hill-r1148570, accessed 23 April 2024.