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 > Watercolours and Drawings Related to the ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Oxford: Christ Church, with Tom Tower, from the River 1797-8

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Oxford: Christ Church, with Tom Tower, from the River’ 1797-8
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Oxford: Christ Church, with Tom Tower, from the River 1797–8
D02358
Turner Bequest L Q
Pencil on white wove paper, 207 x 266 mm
Watermark ‘J WHATMAN 1794’
Inscribed in red ink ‘L.Q.’ bottom right
Stamped in black ink ‘L – Q’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The principal evidence that a sequence of drawings of Oxford and its environs within the present subsection (Tate D01107, D01879, D02360, D02361, D02365–D02371; Turner Bequest XXXVI M, XLIV C, L S, T, X, Y, Z, LI A, C, D) was executed in connection with Turner’s commission to make views for the Oxford Almanack is the similarity between this subject and finished watercolour (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)1 for the 1799 edition (Tate impressions: T05919, T05920). A more elaborate study for that is in the Smaller Fonthill sketchbook (Tate D02237; Turner Bequest XLVIII 2). See also D02365 (Turner Bequest L X).
A pencil drawing, described by Finberg as showing a ‘Landscape, with house and ruins’ measuring 8¼ x 1011/16 inches (210 x 272 mm),2 was apparently lost in the 1928 Tate flood or shortly afterwards, and may have been another in common with the Oxford sequence listed above, and with the series of sixteen similar sheets mentioned in the Technical notes below.
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.333 no.295, reproduced.
2
Finberg 1909, I, p.128, L U, as ‘Landscape with house and ruins’, c.1799–1801; it was provisionally given the Tate accession number D02362, since cancelled.
Technical notes:
The sheet has been folded vertically down the centre. It is one of a sequence of sixteen Yorkshire and other subjects included in the present subsection which were executed on uniform sheets of paper, as discussed and listed in the Introduction.
Verso:
Blank; stamped in brown ink with Turner Bequest monogram

Andrew Wilton
January 2013

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Oxford: Christ Church, with Tom Tower, from the River 1797–8 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-oxford-christ-church-with-tom-tower-from-the-river-r1150289, accessed 19 April 2024.