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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner Oxford from Headington Hill 1830

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Oxford from Headington Hill’ 1830 (Inside front cover of sketchbook)
Inside front cover of sketchbook
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Inside Front Cover:
Oxford from Headington Hill 1830
D41045
Pencil on white wove paper, 203 x 120 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?Oxford’] towards top right and ‘[?Wall]’ bottom centre
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
These five sketches, made with the page turned vertically and separated by horizontal pencil lines, are not mentioned in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory of the Turner Bequest.1 They appear to be variations of the view of Oxford from Headington Hill, looking west from the London road, along which Turner probably approached the first objective of his Midlands tour; the spires and towers are best seen today from South Park, to the south of the road. Turner was long familiar with this prospect, as shown by the pencil and wash sketch of Oxford from Headington Hill of about 1791–2 (private collection),2 a pencil drawing from the 1799 Fonthill sketchbook (Tate D02214; Turner Bequest XLVII 37), and the watercolour View of Oxford from the South Side of Heddington [sic] Hill of 1803–4 (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford).3
There are views in Oxford on folios 1 recto opposite, 1 verso and 2 recto (D21975–D21977).

Matthew Imms
August 2013

1
See A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, pp.729–32.
2
Not in Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979; Colin Harrison, Turner’s Oxford, exhibition catalogue, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 2000, p.99 no.5, as ‘Oxford from Headington Hill; Sunset’, c.1790, not reproduced.
3
Wilton 1979, p.334 no.302, reproduced.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Oxford from Headington 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-oxford-from-headington-hill-r1148615, accessed 11 July 2026.