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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > North of England 1797-1801 > North of England Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Peterborough Cathedral: The Interior, Looking East from the West Door towards the Organ Screen 1797

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Peterborough Cathedral: The Interior, Looking East from the West Door towards the Organ Screen’ 1797
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 93 Recto:
Peterborough Cathedral: The Interior, Looking East from the West Door towards the Organ Screen 1797
D00999
Turner Bequest XXXIV 88
Pencil on white wove paper, 210 x 270 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[...] | ROB[...]’ on tombstone in foreground, upside down
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘XXXIV 88’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The subject is drawn with the page turned horizontally. Turner took some interest in the tombstones that frequently pave the floors of churches and cathedrals in England. In 1796, he had shown at the Royal Academy a watercolour of the interior of Westminster Abbey, St Erasmus in Bishop Islip’s Chapel (British Museum, London)1 in which he inscribes his own name and date of birth on a slab in the foreground.
As David Hill observes, with this study Turner reached the end of his book as it would originally have been bound; it is the last drawing of the tour. Finberg noted immediately after his entry for this page: ‘A number of leaves at end of book have been torn or cut out’;2 those following have been bound in out of sequence, with their correct positions indicated in their respective entries; see the Concordance in the sketchbook’s Introduction.
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.314 no.138, reproduced.
2
Finberg 1909, I, p.73.
Verso:
Blank; stamped in brown ink with Turner Bequest monogram.

Andrew Wilton
January 2013

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Peterborough Cathedral: The Interior, Looking East from the West Door towards the Organ Screen 1797 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2013, 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-peterborough-cathedral-the-interior-looking-east-from-the-r1150157, accessed 19 April 2024.