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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Brighton and Copies from Wilson 1796-7 > Wilson Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Interior of a Church during Holy Communion 1796-7

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Interior of a Church during Holy Communion’ 1796-7
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 13 Verso:
Interior of a Church during Holy Communion 1796–7
D01143
Turner Bequest XXXVII 26
Pencil, watercolour and gouache with pen and brown ink on blue laid wrapping paper prepared with a red-brown wash, 113 x 93 mm
Stamped in black ‘XXXVII – 26’ bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The composition continues across folio 14 recto opposite (D01144; Turner Bequest XXXVII 27). A Liber Studiorum plate, Interior of a Church, was based on this design (see Tate A01146–A01147).1 J.P. Heseltine2 plausibly suggested that the church is St Leonard’s, Heston. This was a part of the world familiar to Turner from an early age since he had spent part of his boyhood in the neighbouring town of Brentford, where his mother’s brother was a butcher. He attended John White’s school there, and a friend from those days, Henry Scott Trimmer (1778–1859),3 was to become vicar of Heston. Other views of what may be the same interior are on folios 15 verso–19 recto (D01147–D01154; Turner Bequest XXXVII 30–37); however, see the entry for D01147 which suggests that, if the church in D01147–D01148 (Turner Bequest XXXVII 30–31) is the same, it is apparently near the sea and may be Margate.

Andrew Wilton
September 2012

1
Alexander J. Finberg, The History of Turner’s Liber Studiorum with a New Catalogue Raisonné, London 1924, pp.277–80 no.70.
2
Undated manuscript note in interleaved copy Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.I, opposite p.80.
3
See James Hamilton, ‘Trimmer, the Revd Henry Scott (1778–1859)’ in Evelyn Joll, Martin Butlin and Luke Herrmann (eds.), The Oxford Companion to J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 2001, pp.343–4.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Interior of a Church during Holy Communion 1796–7 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2012, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-interior-of-a-church-during-holy-communion-r1149835, accessed 18 April 2024.