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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > The Second Meuse-Moselle Tour 1839 > First Mossel and Oxford Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Magdalen Tower, Bridge, Etc., Oxford 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Magdalen Tower, Bridge, Etc., Oxford’ 1839
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 1 Recto:
Magdalen Tower, Bridge, Etc., Oxford 1839
D28291
Turner Bequest CCLXXXIX 1
Pencil on white wove drawing paper, 140 x 235 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘[Bor...] [...]’; ‘one has 6 | [...]’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXXIX–1’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
These slight sketches depict the tower, bridge and other architectural features of Magdalen College, Oxford. For earlier drawings of Magdalen see the Rhine, Strasburg and Oxford sketchbook of 1802 (Tate D04769; Turner Bequest LXXVII 29a); the Hastings sketchbook of 1809 (Tate D07667; Turner Bequest CXI 47a); the Kenilworth sketchbook of 1830 (Tate D21977; Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 2) and the Oxford sketchbook of around 1834 (Tate D27931; Turner Bequest CCLXXXV 24a). There is also a highly finished pencil drawing of 1792–3 (Tate D00127; Turner Bequest XI B) and two detailed watercolours of c.1794 (British Museum, London).1

Alice Rylance-Watson
July 2013

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.308 nos.68, 70.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Magdalen Tower, Bridge, Etc., Oxford 1839 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 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-magdalen-tower-bridge-etc-oxford-r1150572, accessed 19 April 2024.