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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Wales 1798 > Dynevor Castle Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Chepstow Castle from the River Wye 1798

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Chepstow Castle from the River Wye’ 1798
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 17 Verso:
Chepstow Castle from the River Wye 1798
D01491
Turner Bequest XL 17a
Pencil on white wove paper, 135 x 95 mm
Inscribed in red ink ‘76’ top left, upside down
Stamped in black ‘XL – 17 a’ bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The composition is continued on folio 18 recto opposite (D01492).
Turner made a drawing of Chepstow in the contemporary Hereford Court sketchbook (Tate D01261; Turner Bequest XXXVIII 14); another study of it in the present book, rather more worked up, is on folios 19 verso–20 recto (D01624, D01626; Turner Bequest XL 93–94). He had visited Chepstow in 1792, making drawings there (Tate D00130; Turner Bequest XII A, and verso, D40034) and a little later a watercolour of Chepstow castle (Courtauld Gallery, London),1 engraved for Walker’s Copper-Plate Magazine in 1794 (Tate impressions: T05883, T05884). Although it was an archetypal Picturesque site, described by William Gilpin (1724–1804)2 and drawn by many artists, he never made it the subject of a mature watercolour.

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.311 no.88, reproduced.
2
See William Gilpin, Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, &c. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty. Made in the Summer of the Year 1770, London 1782.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Chepstow Castle from the River Wye 1798 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2013, 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-chepstow-castle-from-the-river-wye-r1173728, accessed 20 September 2024.