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: The Castle Keep ?from Wren's Nest Hill 1830

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Dudley: The Castle Keep ?from Wren's Nest Hill’ 1830
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 52 Verso:
Dudley: The Castle Keep ?from Wren’s Nest Hill 1830
D22422
Turner Bequest CCXL 52a
Pencil on white wove paper, 110 x 68 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
As part of unpublished Turner research informed by local knowledge, Dr Bernard Richards has confirmed this drawing, made with the page turned vertically, as a Dudley subject.1 The sketches between folios 50 recto and 54 recto (D22417–D22425) all seem to be of or looking from Wren’s Nest Hill, north of Dudley, in this case looking south-east towards the castle with a ravine or quarry below, as on the recto (D22421) and subsequent pages. A painting of Dudley from the Wren’s Nest by Frederick Henry Henshaw (1807–1891; Dudley Museums Service) shows a similar aspect. 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).
The subject had earlier been tentatively identified as ‘?Beaudesert’ by A.J. Finberg (died 1939), presumably meaning the ruined Beaudesert Hall near Rugeley in Staffordshire, in undated manuscript notes in a copy of his 1909 Inventory.2

Matthew Imms
August 2013

1
Conversation with the author, 14 May 2013.
2
A.J. Finberg, undated MS notes in a copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.II, p.740.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Dudley: The Castle Keep ?from 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-the-castle-keep-from-wrens-nest-hill-r1148572, accessed 24 April 2024.