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 Ashby-de-la-Zouch Castle from the South-West 1830

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Ashby-de-la-Zouch Castle from the South-West’ 1830
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 46 Recto:
Ashby-de-la-Zouch Castle from the South-West 1830
D22061
Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 46
Pencil on white wove paper, 120 x 203 mm
Partial watermark ‘R Bar | 18’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘46’ bottom left, upside down
Stamped in black ‘CCXXXVIII – 46’ top left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, this slight sketch centres on the ruined Great Tower of Ashby-de-la-Zouch Castle, with the square tower of St Helen’s Church to the north-east at the left. The view is now obscured by trees. There is a closer view from this side on the verso (D22062).
For other views of Ashby, see under folio 21 verso (D22012; CCXXXVIII 21). As Eric Shanes has noted, ‘the large number of those studies suggests that the painter went to great lengths to find a view of the scene that sparked his imagination’.1

Matthew Imms
August 2013

1
Shanes 1990, p.276; see also p.286 note 232, and Shanes 1979, p.156.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Ashby-de-la-Zouch Castle from the South-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-ashby-de-la-zouch-castle-from-the-south-west-r1148702, accessed 25 April 2024.