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

Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, the view continues half way across folio 66 recto opposite (D22099; Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 64), showing Dudley from the south-east, from higher and further south than on preceding pages. As part of unpublished Turner research informed by local knowledge, Dr Bernard Richards suggests that Turner drew from the vicinity of the old Rowley Regis road1 (now Dixons Green Road and Oakham Road) although later developments preclude the establishment of a precise viewpoint. Towards the right in the distance is Dudley Castle, with the tower of St Edmund’s Church below and the spire of St Thomas’s towards the left.

Frank Milner notes that this sketch shows Turner ‘experimented ... with strong overlapping diagonals intersecting hillsides and rooflines’ in contrast to the more idyllic, pastoral composition schemes seen on earlier folios, suggesting that this ‘diagonal and quartering emphasis’ may have informed the composition and lighting of Turner’s subsequent watercolour Dudley, Worcestershire of about 1832 (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight),2 engraved in 1835 for the Picturesque Views in England and Wales (Tate impressions: T05097, T06113, T06114).3

For other views of Dudley see under folio 23 recto (D22016).