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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Kenilworth Castle: Gaunt's Tower and Leicester's Building 1830

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 36 Verso:
Kenilworth Castle: Gaunt’s Tower and Leicester’s Building 1830
D22043
Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 36a
Pencil on white wove paper, 120 x 203 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Looking north-east, the jagged stump of Gaunt’s Tower and the relatively well-preserved Elizabethan ruin of Leicester’s Building are seen from just inside Kenilworth Castle’s low perimeter wall, or possibly from the wall itself. The slight form towards the bottom right appears to be a continuation of the tip of the tower. Leicester’s Building is also prominent on the recto (D22042).
Most of the sketches between folios 27 recto (D22024) and 37 verso (D22045) show Kenilworth. For the history of the castle and Turner’s subsequent watercolour, which Eric Shanes has described as a ‘synthesis’ of sketches between folios 28 verso (D22027) and 37 verso,1 see under folio 29 recto (D22028).

Matthew Imms
August 2013

1
Shanes 1979, p.156

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Kenilworth Castle: Gaunt’s Tower and Leicester’s Building 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-kenilworth-castle-gaunts-tower-and-leicesters-building-r1148684, accessed 28 March 2024.