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 Lacock Abbey: The Entrance Front 1798

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Lacock Abbey: The Entrance Front’ 1798
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 87 Verso:
Lacock Abbey: The Entrance Front 1798
D01609
Turner Bequest XL 85a
Pencil on white wove paper, 135 x 95 mm
Inscribed in red ink ‘8’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘XL – 85 a’ top right, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The drawings of Lacock in this sketchbook are very careful and include many details, suggesting that Turner had been commissioned to make a ‘portrait’ of the abbey for its owner, Davenport Talbot, father of the pioneering photographer Henry Fox Talbot, whose earliest photographic experiments show parts of the building. The composition is continued on folio 88 recto opposite (D01610; Turner Bequest XL 86). There are studies of ornamental details above the main view on the present page
Another drawing of the house is on folios 89 verso–90 recto (D01613–D01614; Turner Bequest XL 87a–88), and Turner noted many details of the architecture on folios 85 verso, 87 recto, 91 verso and 92 verso (D01605, D01608, D01617, D01619; Turner Bequest XL 83a, 85, 89a, 90a).

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Lacock Abbey: The Entrance Front 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-lacock-abbey-the-entrance-front-r1173848, accessed 20 September 2024.