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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Scotland 1801-10 > Helmsley Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Brinkburn: Part of the Ruined West End of the Priory Church 1801

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Brinkburn: Part of the Ruined West End of the Priory Church’ 1801
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 34 Recto:
Brinkburn: Part of the Ruined West End of the Priory Church 1801
D02517
Turner Bequest LIII 34
Pencil on white wove paper, 162 x 112 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘34’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘LIII – 34’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner made a general view of the twelfth–century Augustinian Priory at Brinkburn on the same occasion, in the subsequently disbound Smaller Fonthill sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest XLVIII); no.8 in the checklist in that book’s Introduction (see the ‘Architectural and Other Subjects c.1797–1807’ section of this catalogue), it is now in the Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts. That drawing was used as the basis for the watercolour of about 1830 (Museums Sheffield),1 engraved for the Picturesque Views in England and Wales in 1832 (Tate impressions: T04597, T05091).
The cusped arcading and Romanesque doorway shown by Turner in this study are still visible today, though the church was heavily restored in the nineteenth century.

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.398 no.843, reproduced.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Brinkburn: Part of the Ruined West End of the Priory Church 1801 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 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-brinkburn-part-of-the-ruined-west-end-of-the-priory-church-r1178539, accessed 08 May 2024.