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 from the South-West; with ?a Sketch Map 1830

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Birmingham from the South-West; with ?a Sketch Map’ 1830
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 20 Recto:
Birmingham from the South-West; with ?a Sketch Map 1830
D22010
Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 20
Pencil on white wove paper, 120 x 203 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘20’ top right
Inscribed in pencil ‘125’ top left, inverted
Stamped in black ‘CCXXXVIII – 20’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The landscape sketch and what appears to be the beginnings of a map on this page are not mentioned in Finberg’s Turner Bequest Inventory. The few cursive lines in the middle of the page may be an abandoned version of the map of a manor house by a river on folio 19 verso opposite (D22009).
The drawing of Birmingham at the inside of the page, made with the book turned horizontally, continues across from D22009. The narrow two-page spread forms, unusually, a continuation of the view of Birmingham on the recto of folio 19 (D22008), which also extends across folio 18 verso (D22007).
Before drawing on D22009 and the present page, Turner would have turned D22008 back, doubling it up almost into the gutter, and presumably held it there while extending the panorama. For other views of Birmingham, see under folio 3 verso (D21980).
Technical notes:
Although this side of the leaf is stamped ‘CCXXXVIII – 20’, his entry for that number refers to ‘Leicester Abbey’,1 the subject now bound inverted on the verso (D22011). As presently arranged, the view on the left-hand half of this page correctly matches up with the brief sliver of townscape on folio 19 verso opposite (D22009), which is itself an extension of the drawing on folio 19 recto (D22008); the latter forms a double-page view with folio 18 verso (D22007).

Matthew Imms
August 2013

1
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.730.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Birmingham from the South-West; with ?a Sketch Map 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-from-the-south-west-with-a-sketch-map-r1148652, accessed 19 April 2024.