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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Thames, London and South of England 1821 ... > Mortlake and Pulborough Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Upperton Monument in Petworth Park 1825

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Upperton Monument in Petworth Park’ 1825
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 19 Recto:
The Upperton Monument in Petworth Park 1825
D18739
Turner Bequest CCXIII 19
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 187 mm
Part watermark ‘R Bar | 18’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?sheep]’ towards bottom left
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘19’ top left, upside down (now faint)
Stamped in black ‘CCXIII – 19’ top left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, the Upperton Monument folly is shown from the west with Petworth Park beyond. The prospect to the left and the foreground are now obscured by woodland. Having not recognised the subject in 1909, Finberg later suggested that it showed a ‘tower, [at] Petworth or conceivably Arundel Park’.1
The tower is thought to be to the design of Turner’s friend Sir John Soane,2 and is seen from the other direction in two of the gouaches associated with Turner’s 1827 visit to Petworth (Tate D24635, D24799; Turner Bequest CCLIX 70, 234). A watercolour which probably dates from a few years later (Tate D29007; Turner Bequest CCXCII 58) shows effectively the same view as the present drawing.3
The sequence of sketches between folio 17 verso (D18736) and (apparently) folio 26 recto (D18753), and possibly 26 verso (D18754), comprises Sussex subjects in the vicinity of Petworth, those as far as folio 22 verso (D18746) showing the park west of the house, from the vicinity of the Upperton Monument. For a note on Lord Egremont, Petworth, and Turner’s work there, see the sketchbook’s Introduction.

Matthew Imms
December 2014

1
See undated MS notes by A.J. Finberg (died 1939) and notes with the same wording by C.F. Bell (died 1966) in their respective copies of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.II, p.648; see also; the subject was first unambiguously identified by Ian Warrell in Butlin, Luther and Warrell 1989, pp.127, 131, and Warrell 1991, p.64.
2
See Warrell 1991, p.64.
3
See Warrell 1989, pp.127–8.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Upperton Monument in Petworth Park 1825 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-upperton-monument-in-petworth-park-r1172861, accessed 19 April 2024.