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: Distant View of the Abbey from the East, with the Lake in the Foreground and a Team of Oxen 1799

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Fonthill: Distant View of the Abbey from the East, with the Lake in the Foreground and a Team of Oxen’ 1799
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Fonthill: Distant View of the Abbey from the East, with the Lake in the Foreground and a Team of Oxen 1799
D02223
Turner Bequest XLVII 46
Pencil, watercolour and gouache with scraping-out on white wove paper, 330 x 469 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom left
Inscribed in brown ink ‘30’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘XLVII 30’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Working with the page turned horizontally, Turner has brought his subject to a high degree of finish, deploying washes of richly hued watercolour to create the effect of an oil painting. The palette here is reminiscent of that in the large watercolour Caernarvon Castle, North Wales that he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1800 (Tate D04164; Turner Bequest LXX M),1 but the pencil drawing on which the watercolour is superimposed consists of broad loose hatching in the style of the late landscape studies of Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788). With its carefully balanced groups of trees and team of oxen there are compositional similarities, too: Turner seems to be imitating Gainsborough’s use of classical models derived from the work of Claude Lorrain (1604/5–1682), as he does in the Caernarvon Castle as well.
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.329 no.263, pl.52.
Technical notes:
For a proposed sequence for the leaves of the disbound Fonthill sketchbook, with this page as folio 20, see the Introduction.
Verso:
Blank

Andrew Wilton
March 2013

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Fonthill: Distant View of the Abbey from the East, with the Lake in the Foreground and a Team of Oxen 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-east-with-the-r1174236, accessed 26 April 2024.