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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Architectural and Other Subjects c.1797 ... > Fonthill Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Fonthill: View across a Valley towards the Unfinished Tower of the Abbey, from the North-East 1799

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Fonthill: View across a Valley towards the Unfinished Tower of the Abbey, from the North-East’ 1799
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Fonthill: View across a Valley towards the Unfinished Tower of the Abbey, from the North-East 1799
D02188
Turner Bequest XLVII 11
Pencil, watercolour and gouache on white wove paper, 332 x 469 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram below right of centre
Inscribed in pencil ‘5’ bottom right and ‘98’ bottom left
Stamped in black ‘XLVII 11’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Made with the page turned horizontally, this fortunately well-preserved drawing was used as the basis of the finished watercolour executed for William Beckford and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1800 with the title North-east view of the Gothic Abbey (sunset) now building at Fonthill, the seat of W. Beckford, Esq. (Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester).1 The finished work follows it fairly closely, though Turner characteristically increased the scale of the landscape, while giving the left-hand group of trees a more dynamic slant away from the centre. A pencil study of the composition is in the Dolbadarn sketchbook (Tate D02162; Turner Bequest XLVI 113).
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.338 no.339, reproduced.
Technical notes:
For a proposed sequence for the leaves of the disbound Fonthill sketchbook, with this page as folio 13, see the Introduction.
Verso:
Blank

Andrew Wilton
March 2013

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Fonthill: View across a Valley towards the Unfinished Tower of the Abbey, from the North-East 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-view-across-a-valley-towards-the-unfinished-tower-r1174229, accessed 25 April 2024.