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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Ashby-de-la-Zouch Castle with St Helen's Church Beyond 1830

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 50 Recto:
Ashby-de-la-Zouch Castle with St Helen’s Church Beyond 1830
D22067
Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 50
Pencil on white wove paper, 120 x 203 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘’[?W]’ bottom centre and ‘[?L...]’ bottom right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘50’ bottom left, upside down
Stamped in black ‘CCXXXVIII – 50’ top left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, there are two similar views of the ruins of Ashby-de-la-Zouch Castle here. Above is a view from the south, with the brick-built tower at the south-west corner of the gardens at the centre of the foreground, with the Hastings Tower to the right and the kitchen block with the square tower of St Helen’s Church beyond. Below right is a smaller prospect from further a little further east, framed by pencil lines. Turner’s viewpoints are now occupied by later houses and gardens.
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 with St Helen’s Church Beyond 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-with-st-helens-church-beyond-r1148708, accessed 29 March 2024.