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

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

Joseph Mallord William Turner Birmingham, with Christ Church and St Philip's Church from the Birmingham and Worcester Canal 1830

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Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 4 Recto:
Birmingham, with Christ Church and St Philip’s Church from the Birmingham and Worcester Canal 1830
D41540
Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 4
Pencil on white wove paper, 120 x 203 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘4’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CCXXXVIII – 4’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The drawing continues on folio 3 verso opposite (D21980), under which the subject is discussed. There is no page ‘4’ listed in Finberg’s Turner Bequest Inventory, apparently due to a typographic error; his page ‘3a’ (D21980) is curly-bracketed in the usual way for double-page drawings, but there is a blank space where the figure ‘4’ should be, although the page itself is correctly stamped as such. This part of the view comprises rather nondescript buildings, possibly above a canal bridge to the right of centre.
The subject was identified as Birmingham (rather than Oxford) by A.J. Finberg (died 1939) and the watercolour and Turner scholar C.F. Bell (died 1966) in similarly worded undated manuscript notes in copies of Finberg’s 1909 Inventory.1

Matthew Imms
August 2013

1
A.J. Finberg, undated MS notes in a copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.II, p.729; C.F. Bell, undated MS notes in another copy at the same location, vol.II, p.729.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Birmingham, with Christ Church and St Philip’s Church from the Birmingham and Worcester Canal 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-birmingham-with-christ-church-and-st-philips-church-from-the-r1148622, accessed 20 April 2024.