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 ?Buildings on or near Wren's Nest Hill, Dudley 1830

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Buildings on or near Wren's Nest Hill, Dudley’ 1830
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 47 Verso:
?Buildings on or near Wren’s Nest Hill, Dudley 1830
D22064
Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 47a
Pencil on white wove paper, 120 x 203 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?cross]’ top left and ‘[?Cow L...]’ below centre
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The subject remains unconfirmed, but is possibly a group of buildings on the slopes of Wren’s Nest Hill, north-west of the centre of Dudley; if so, they do not survive. The hill was subject to intensive limestone mining and quarrying for building stone and lime used in mortar and fertiliser and in the blast furnaces of the local iron industry.1 It is the viewpoint for the drawings on folios 59 recto and verso (D22085, D22086, D22087; Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 57, 57a, 58) and the same buildings are possibly shown on folios 60 verso and 61 recto (D22088 D22089; Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 58a, 59).
At the bottom right is a smaller sketch of a rolling wooded landscape with buildings near the centre, which may be the same as those in the main view.

Matthew Imms
August 2013

1
See ‘Wren’s Nest National Nature Reserve’, Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, accessed 11 July 2013, http://www.dudley.gov.uk/resident/environment/countryside/nature-reserves/wrens-nest-nnrwrens-nest-nnr/; and ‘The Geology of Wren’s Nest Nature Reserve’, BGCS: The Black Country Geological Society, accessed 11 July 2013, http://www.bcgs.info/pdf_files/wrens_nest_leaflet_2009.pdf.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘?Buildings on or near Wren’s Nest Hill, Dudley 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-buildings-on-or-near-wrens-nest-hill-dudley-r1148705, accessed 20 September 2024.