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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Fonthill: Distant View of the Abbey, from the South 1799

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Fonthill: Distant View of the Abbey, from the South 1799
D02193
Turner Bequest XLVII 16
Pencil on white wove paper, 340 x 469 mm
Watermark ‘J Whatman 1794’
Stamped in black ‘XLVII 16’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Made with the page turned horizontally, this study seems to be related to the watercolour View of the Gothic Abbey (afternoon) now building at Fonthill, the seat of William Beckford Esq. that Turner showed with his other Fonthill watercolours at the Royal Academy in 1800 (private collection).1
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.338 no.335, reproduced; see also ibid., nos.336–339, reproduced, and pl.53.
Technical notes:
There are smears of grey and grey-blue colour along the bottom edge, and of yellow along the right edge. For a proposed sequence for the leaves of the disbound Fonthill sketchbook, with this page as folio 10, see the Introduction.
Verso:
Blank

Andrew Wilton
March 2013

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Fonthill: Distant View of the Abbey, from the South 1799 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 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-fonthill-distant-view-of-the-abbey-from-the-south-r1174226, accessed 28 March 2024.