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 Kenilworth Castle from the North-West 1830

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Kenilworth Castle from the North-West’ 1830
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 37 Recto:
Kenilworth Castle from the North-West 1830
D22044
Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 37
Pencil on white wove paper, 120 x 203 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘37’ bottom left, upside down
Stamped in black ‘CCXXXVIII – 37’ top left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, Kenilworth Castle is seen from the vicinity of Purlieu Lane, looking south-east. Above the Swan Tower on the outer wall, the Great Tower is flanked by Leicester’s Gatehouse to the left, and the Great Hall flanked by the Strong Tower and the Saintlowe Tower to the right. An Elizabethan garden has recently been recreated in the area between the perimeter wall and the Great Tower, including a prominent Renaissance-style pavilion between the Swan Tower and Leicester’s Gatehouse.
Most of the sketches between folios 27 recto (D22024) and the verso of the present leaf (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 D22045,1 see under folio 29 recto (D22028).

Matthew Imms
August 2013

1
Shanes 1979, p.156

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Kenilworth Castle from the North-West 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-from-the-north-west-r1148685, accessed 10 May 2024.