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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > East Anglia, Sussex and Yorkshire 1824 > Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?Ruins of the Priory at Orford c.1824

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Ruins of the Priory at Orford’ c.1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 70 Recto:
?Ruins of the Priory at Orford c.1824
D18284
Turner Bequest CCIX 70
Pencil on white wove paper, 118 x 115 mm
Watermarked ‘[al]lee | [18]19’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
These previously unidentified sketches depicting the ruins of a gothic building may show the vestiges of the ancient priory at Orford in Suffolk. Sir Ralph Glanville, Justiciar of Henry II, founded the Augustinian Butley Priory in 1171.1 It was dissolved in 1538 during the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the vestiges of the building were converted to residential use in the eighteenth century.2
Other sketches of Orford in this sketchbook are Tate D18299, D18304–D18309; Turner Bequest CCIX 82, 86a–89. See also Tate impression T04524.

Alice Rylance-Watson
January 2015

1
‘Butley Abbey and Priory Gatehouse’, English Heritage, accessed 29 January 2015, http://list.english-heritage.org.uk/resultsingle.aspx?uid=1030850 see also Butley Priory, accessed 29 January 2015, http://www.butleypriory.org.uk/page2.html
2
Ibid. The topographical printmakers Nathaniel and Samuel Buck published a print of The East View of Butley-Priory, in the County of Suffolk in 1738, as part of their Views of Ruins of Castles and Abbeys in England project. See an impression at Albion Prints, accessed 29 January 2015, http://www.albion-prints.com/buck-1738-folio-architecture-print-east-view-of-butley-priory-suffolk-11972-p.asp

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘?Ruins of the Priory at Orford c.1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-ruins-of-the-priory-at-orford-r1181166, accessed 26 April 2024.