The House and Grounds at East Cowes Castle 1827

Matthew Imms

The House and Grounds at East Cowes Castle 1827

Entry
Artworks

D20804–D20816, D20820–D20853, D22690, D22694, D22705, D22722, D22761, D24845, D24847, D24848, D24861–D24864, D40083–D40085, D40306, D40521, D40523, D40524, D41420

Turner Bequest CCXXVII a 1–13, 17–50, CCXLIV 28, 32, 43, 60, 99, CCLX 9, 11, 12, 25–28

References

1827

A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.700–1, CCXXVII a 1–57 , as ‘East Cowes Castle’, c.1827.

1961

Alexander J. Finberg, The Life of J.M.W. Turner, R.A. Second Edition, Revised, with a Supplement, by Hilda F. Finberg, revised ed., Oxford 1961, p.302, as 1827.

1969

Graham Reynolds, ‘Turner at East Cowes Castle’ in Victoria and Albert Museum Yearbook, vol.I, London 1969, pp.73–4.

1974

Martin Butlin, Andrew Wilton and John Gage, Turner 1775–1851, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy, London 1974, pp.102, 104 under no.322.

1975

Gerald Wilkinson, Turner’s Colour Sketches 1820–34, London 1975, pp.38, 80.

1979

Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.165.

1984

Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.151 under no.244.

1987

Andrew Wilton, Turner in his Time, London 1987, p.167.

1988

Ian Warrell and Diane Perkins, Turner & Architecture, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1988, p.16.

1989

Ian Warrell in Martin Butlin, Mollie Luther and Warrell, Turner at Petworth: Painter and Patron, London 1989, pp.64, 148.

1999

Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, pp.30, 253 note 84.

2002

Ian Warrell, ‘Petworth Revisited: Turner’s Paintings for the Carved Room and his other Country House Subjects’ in Christopher Rowell, Warrell and David Blayney Brown, Turner at Petworth, exhibition catalogue, Petworth House, Petworth 2002, p.58.

2006

Andrew Wilton, Turner as Draughtsman, Aldershot 2006, p.93 (Wilton 2006a).

2006

Andrew Wilton, Turner in his Time, revised ed., London 2006, p.237 (Wilton 2006b).

2015

Ian Warrell, Turner’s Wessex: Architecture and Ambition, exhibition catalogue, Salisbury Museum 2015, pp.170, 171.

East Cowes Castle once stood near the northern tip of the Isle of Wight. It was developed in several stages in light-hearted combination of mock-medieval and Tudor styles by the prominent Regency architect John Nash (1752–1835) from a small existing house acquired in 1798, and in 1834 he was still making changes.1 Guests over the years included the Prince Regent (later King George IV),2 as well as Turner himself, who spent the late summer of 1827 there (see the overall Introduction to the tour). The house was sold shortly after Nash’s death and a long decline was followed by final demolition around 1950.3 Meanwhile, Queen Victoria’s Isle of Wight residence, Osborne House, had been built less than a mile to the south-east.

Comparison between early Ordnance Survey maps and the site today confirm that Nash’s ‘castle’ stood on an eminence overlooking the River Medina, Cowes and the Solent to the north-west, at a point which is now open ground with grass and trees between the houses on Hefford Road and Hendy Road. Old Road to the north-east and Sylvan Avenue to the south-west appear to mark the boundaries of Nash’s estate, most of which has been built over with suburban homes. Only Nash’s North Lodge,4 in rustic cottage style, survives (see Tate D20822; Turner Bequest CCXXVII a 19). Many aspects of the house and estate are recorded in Turner’s drawings, which form a comprehensive if haphazard survey, and even the more romanticised and somewhat generalised sketches can usually be matched to known features of the building, of which there are numerous prints and photographs,5 including William Daniell’s 1823 engraving Mr Nash’s Castle (Tate impression: T02970).

The artist and diarist Joseph Farington (1747–1821) had enjoyed a fleeting visit in 1817; after sending his card ahead, he and his friends were invited to see the house and grounds, and were first shown ‘the Dining Room in which the table was genteely [sic] set for dinner for 7 persons’:

The servant then told us we might pass through the opposite room, “The Drawing room”, in which was Mr. Nash with Company, all of whom were seated when we entered, and we only passed through the middle of the room to the Conservatory. R.A.F. and Eliza being foremost Mr. Nash bowed to them which I did not see. – From the conservatory we passed to the Library [on the south-west front], a handsome room well stored with books, at the end of which was a smaller room with a table for writing &c [the ‘octagon room’ below the tallest of three central towers] & adjoining it a Billiard room. We returned to the Conservatory & from thence walked in the grounds & shady walks.6

From a detailed ground plan,7 the core of the house was approximately 24 metres (80 feet) square, with its corners at the points of the compass. The drive approached southwards through tall trees to the entrance porch on the north-east front, with the dining room and drawing room looking out over a terrace towards the north-west. An attached conservatory of some 9 by 12 metres (30 by 40 feet), accessible from the dining room, extended south-west along the terrace; its interior is apparently shown in Tate D20850 (Turner Bequest CCXXVII a 47). There are a few drawings now identified as showing the interiors of the drawing room and library (D20851, D20852, D22690, D22694, D22705, D22761; CCXXVII a 48, 49, CCXLIV 28, 32, 43, 99).

Several of these interiors were associated in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory with Petworth House in Sussex, sequenced with the large number of blue paper studies at Tate (Turner Bequest CCXLIV)8 probably made there in the autumn of 1827. Graham Reynolds has noted how the East Cowes sheets of the late summer anticipate ‘the intimacy of the better-known Petworth scenes ... with his host probably among the figures’.9 Other East Cowes subjects are incorporated here from one of Finberg’s sections of blue paper drawings ‘mostly connected with “French Rivers”’ (Turner Bequest CCLX),10 having been separated from the others in the studio or at some later stage, and only correctly identified since, as noted in individual entries. Martin Butlin, Andrew Wilton and John Gage recognised a number of them as Isle of Wight subjects,11 and Ian Warrell has noted more subsequently,12 as cited in individual entries; there are other instances in the parallel ‘Cowes, the River Medina and Shipping’ subsection. For further discussion of Turner’s wide-ranging use of blue paper from 1826 onwards, see the technical notes below.

Continuing around the house, at the foot of the octagonal tower at the southern corner a much larger attached conservatory of some 9 by 40 metres (30 by 130 feet) ran to the south-east, opening onto the ‘Regent’s room’. The glazed arcades of the two conservatories overlooked a lawn of about 61 by 12 metres (200 by 40 feet), marked at its southern corner by the small vaulted ‘garden room’ with open Gothic arches shown in Tate D20807 and D20850 (Turner Bequest CCXXVII a 4, 10). A little further to the south was a formal circular pond with urns and statues (D20840, D20841; CCXXVII a 37, 38), apparently with kitchen gardens beyond.

Other views in and around the terraces and gardens immediately surrounding the house are Tate D20805, D20806, D20808, D20816, D20831, D20838, D20839, D20842, D20846–D20848, D24848 and D24864 (Turner Bequest CCXXVII a 2, 3, 5, 13, 28, 35, 36, 39, 43, 44, 45, CCLX 12, 28). Two of these (D20812, D24847; CCXXVII a 9, CCLX 11) show figures on the bank below the lawn with the castle in the distance to the north, and can be related to the convivial fête-champêtre gatherings shown below the steps down from the three arches of the smaller conservatory (D20826, D20832, D20844; CCXXVII a 23, 29, 41), also shown without figures in D20830 (CCXXVII a 27). These can be linked in turn to the painting Boccaccio Relating the Tale of the Birdcage, exhibited in 1828 (Tate N00507),13 discussed under D20844. Compare also the colour study of a gathering in a sunlit clearing (D22722; CCXLIV 60), formerly associated with Petworth.

Landscaped gardens with woods and ponds dropped away from the conservatory and lawn to the south-west, with glades affording glimpses of the distant towers and seclusion enough for the occasional suggestion of the pale figures of ‘lovers’, as Finberg termed them,14 often by moonlight (Tate D20809, D20815, D20834, D20835, D20837; Turner Bequest CCXXVII a 6, 12, 31, 32, 34). Other woodland scenes with occasional figures or the suggestion of them among the convoluted forms of the pen work are D20810, D20811, D20814, D20822, D20825, D20836, D20845 (CCXXVII a 7, 8, 11, 19, 22, 33, 42). Graham Reynolds has noted that the Turner Bequest CCXXVII a grouping shows ‘how much Turner was captivated by the Castle and its grounds’, drawing it ‘from every aspect, frequently at night’, and how its architectural ‘recreation of the romance of the medieval past worked so powerfully on his mind’ that he included the ‘figures of lovers embracing’,15 in the ‘haunting, enticing atmosphere of the recreated past’.16

Gerald Wilkinson offered a more prosaic interpretation of these ‘heavy-handed nocturnes’: ‘all force and vigour, which seems inappropriate ... I have a theory that most of the drawings were done at night and that the master could not see what he was drawing. Also, he may have dined too well. [John] Ruskin says “unworthy of him”’ (in the note quoted in full below), although Wilkinson conceded that despite being ‘a bit crude’, they evoke ‘poetry and music lurking in the over-emphatic undergrowth’.17 A full moon appears in several of these scenes, contrasting alongside the pale forms of the distant towers with the inky darkness of the foliage (Tate D20809, D20814, D20815, D20835, D20836). There is a new crescent moon in D20811, and in two of the distant views mentioned next (D20824, D20843; Turner Bequest CCXXVII a 21, 40). This imagery raises the question as to how far any of these figures and nocturnal effects were observed, recollected or invented. The versatile blue of the paper lends itself equally to the topographical clarity of clear summer daylight effects or the suggestion of the glimmer of dusk or moonlight, depending on the definition and balance of the applied black and white.

A few more conventional studies show the house from various angles in the middle distance, framed by trees but not lost among them in Tate D20827–D20829, D20833 (Turner Bequest CCXXVII a 24, 25, 26, 30) and D40306 (verso of D20809; CCXXVII a 6). Moving further away, there are numerous distant views of the house, often from the south with the Medina and Cowes shown beyond to the north-west (D20804, D20820, D20821, D20823, D20824, D20843, D20849, D20853, D24845; CCXXVII a 1, 17, 18, 20, 21, 40, 46, 50, CCLX 9; and D40084, the verso of CCLX 26). The most unusual views are perhaps three from the castellated roof, looking west over the River Medina to Cowes (D24861–D24863; CCLX 25, 26, 27), which are complemented by a pencil sketch in the Isle of Wight sketchbook (Tate D20757; Turner Bequest CCXXVII 16a).

There are slight studies on the backs of three sheets: Tate D41420 (verso of D22761; Turner Bequest CCXLIV 99) shows a man and a woman in everyday dress, perhaps visitors at East Cowes Castle or in relation to the regatta events at nearby Cowes; D40083 (verso of D20815; CCLX 12) is damaged, and may show shipping or trees; D40085 (verso of D20830; CCLX 27) is a clearer pencil view of shipping off Cowes, and effectively belongs with the grouping of such studies on similar blue paper in the ‘Cowes, the River Medina and Shipping’ subsection. A few ink studies from Finberg’s Turner Bequest CCXXVII a ‘East Cowes Castle’ grouping will also be found there, as they show subjects other than the house.

In Finberg’s ‘East Cowes Castle’ grouping but excluded here is Tate D20818 (Turner Bequest CCXXVII a 15), a technically similar chalk and ink study he recognised as relating to the painting Dido Directing the Equipment of the Fleet, or the Morning of the Carthaginian Empire (Tate N00506),18 exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1828 along with the Boccaccio subject mentioned above and the two Cowes regatta scenes commissioned John Nash; see the overall Introduction to the present section. A more problematic anomaly is D20817 (CCXXVII a 14), an atmospheric and probably imaginary night scene of a pale castle or house among trees, in gouache and watercolour on buff paper of a similar size, which Finberg included in his East Cowes Castle blue paper set.19 However, the details of its architecture bear no resemblance to those of the actual house, and since its relationships with other works make it likely to be a study for a historical or literary subject it is dealt with elsewhere.

Finberg noted that John Ruskin somewhat ambivalently endorsed a wrapper containing the sheets of the Turner Bequest CCXXVII a grouping: ‘64. Pen and ink with white chalk, grays. Of considerable interest, but scrawled and unworthy of him.’20

See Michael Mansbridge, John Nash: A Complete Catalogue, Oxford 1991, p.86.

Ibid.; see also Terence Davis, John Nash: The Prince Regent’s Architect, revised ed., Newton Abbot 1973, pp.60–2.

See Mansbridge 1991, p.87.

See photograph, ibid., and text, referring to ‘South Lodge’ (sic).

See for example ibid., pp.86–7; see also Ian Sherfield, East Cowes Castle: The Seat of John Nash: A Pictorial History, Camberley 1984.

Entry for 6 September 1817, in Kathryn Cave ed., The Diary of Joseph Farington, vol.XIV, New Haven and London 1984, pp.5078–9.

A measured ‘Ground-floor plan of East Cowes Castle’ in ibid., p.86; see also Farington’s sketch plan from memory, reproduced in Cave 1984, p.5078.

Finberg 1909, II, pp.744–6, CCXLIV 1–116, as ‘Petworth Water Colours’, c.1830.

Reynolds 1969, p.74.

Finberg 1909, II, pp.806–13, CCLX 1–136, as ‘Pencil and ink on blue paper: mostly connected with “French Rivers” series’, c.1830.

See Butlin, Wilton and Gage 1974, p.102.

In particular Warrell 1989, p.148, and Warrell 1999, pp.253 note 84, 254 note 87.

Butlin and Joll 1984, pp.151–2 no.244, pl.245 (colour); see also Butlin, Wilton and Gage 1974, p.104 no.322, and Warrell 2015, p.171.

See Finberg 1909, II, p.701.

Reynolds 1969, p.73.

Ibid., p.74; see also Warrell 2002, p.58.

Wilkinson 1975, p.38.

Butlin and Joll 1984, pp.149–50 no.241, pl.243; see also Warrell 1999, pp.31, 254 note 88.

Finberg 1909, II, p.700.

Ibid.

Technical notes

The white highlights applied to a number of the sheets are described in their individual media and dimensions data as gouache, while most are given as chalk, presumably stemming from Finberg’s brief general note of ‘white chalk’.21 Reflecting examinations of individual sheets by Tate conservators over the years, these existing variations have been retained, although it is unclear from brief visual checks by the present author whether there is such a dichotomy. The white medium usually appears dry and chalk-like with little body, although this may indicate gradual, long-term changes on the relatively soft surface of the paper, which is also prone to fading.

Turner had used blue paper (and others tinted or washed pink or brown) early in his career, in a conscious emulation ‘Old Master’ style in sketchbooks employed for working up pictorial compositions for major paintings, often with strong chiaroscuro effects through the use of dark chalk or ink and white highlights, such as the imposing Calais Pier book from the turn of the century (Tate; Turner Bequest LXXXI). In the mid 1820s, while continuing to use conventional sketchbooks of white paper, he adopted a practice of using small, neatly torn sheets of blue (or blue-grey) paper, sometimes working in pencil alone, but often with strong watercolour or gouache colours and/or white highlights in chalk or gouache. There is a ‘sea of blue and grey papers, all the same size, with no dates’ in the Turner Bequest,22 numbering well over a thousand sheets and still in the course of being researched, identified and reunited, as well as similar works in other collections.23 It is now clear that Turner’s use of such sheets continued until the Continental tours of 1839 and 1840.24

In 1979 Andrew Wilton observed that while the Isle of Wight subjects were the ‘first closely datable examples’ it was possible that some of the material for the various ‘Rivers of Europe’ projects may have preceded them;25 subsequent research has since proved to be the case, and the first extensive use of these tinted papers was on the 1826 tour of Brittany and the Loire.26 Ian Warrell has discussed the cross-over between different subjects and media and the consequent issues in attempting to categorise and date the sheets on the basis of whether or not ink or gouache were used. For example, a few of the autumn 1827 ‘Petworth’ gouaches mentioned above (Tate; Turner Bequest CCXLIV) have turned out to be associated with the East Cowes Castle stay of a few weeks earlier, and indeed Turner had been in the habit of using gouache on buff or grey paper in numerous works made for Walter Fawkes at Farnley Hall in Yorkshire 27 in the previous decade.28

Many of the ‘French Rivers’ drawings on blue paper (Tate and elsewhere)29 were developed to the point where they were effectively complete and sufficiently detailed to be interpreted directly as engravings, whereas the East Cowes and Petworth drawings had the less formal character of private sketches or memoranda;30 the use of pen and ink typically ‘conveys economically the architectural form of the castle, only vaguely suggesting the ... details’.31 Turner did use ink for some French blue paper subjects in the closing years of the decade, although this combination is otherwise ‘rare’,32 as he was ‘said to have disliked using pens for the purposes of sketching on the spot, “because they were apt to splutter.”’33 Nevertheless, he seems to have given a handful of small, relatively highly finished drawings in ink, and others in pencil, as gifts during his time at East Cowes, as noted in the general Introduction to the tour and discussed in detail in the Introduction to the ‘Cowes, the River Medina and Shipping’ subsection.34

The difficulty of seeing the initial pencil strokes against the similarly toned paper, as first attempted in France in 1826, may have led to the direct use of ink in most cases at East Cowes Castle, although this was largely a passing phase.35 Perhaps the relaxed circumstances of a prolonged working holiday and the privacy of a landscaped estate encouraged Turner to adopt a more emphatic and expressive approach, however good the dining or advanced the hour according to the later speculation noted above. It is evident that most of the shipping and views in the parallel ‘Cowes, the River Medina and Shipping’ subsection are rendered in more precise, prosaic pencil comparable with his contemporary sketchbook practice. Ink was ‘presumably less useful when in the midst of the action, sketching from a boat’,36 although there are also some harbour-side scenes, particularly with wooded foregrounds, which use the same dark ink. Ian Warrell has summarised the advantages and limitations of Turner’s short-lived use of ink on blue paper:

... characterised by an animated, scratchy draughtsmanship that is primarily linear and at times verges on the incisive qualities of caricature. On its own, the starkly minimal effect produced appears not to have satisfied Turner, who went on to supplement the bare outlines with a kind of rudimentary chiaroscuro, built up with thicker penwork, washes of ink or highlights of white.37

Three ink offsets are included in this subsection, dating from the 1928 Tate Gallery flood: Tate D40521 from D20821 (Turner Bequest CCXXVII a 18), D40523 from D20814 (CCXXVII a 11), and D40524 from D20822 (CCXXVII a 19). Three further cases are in the parallel ‘Cowes, the River Medina and Shipping’ subsection (Tate D40522, D40525, D40526). Various other sheets suffered damage, the heavy ink being particularly susceptible.

Ibid.

Wilkinson 1975, p.80, where the principal sections are tabulated and summarised from Finberg 1909, II, and selected examples reproduced pp.80–98.

Wilton 1979, pp.406–23 nos.906–1043.

For Turner’s use of opaque media on these tinted papers, see Wilton 2006a, pp.91–4; for technical analysis of the papers, see Peter Bower, Turner’s Later Papers: A Study of the Manufacture, Selection and Use of His Drawing Papers 1820–1851, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, pp.88–113.

Wilton 1979, p.165.

See Ian Warrell, Turner on the Loire, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1997; see also Warrell 1999, pp.30, 31, Wilton 1987, p.167 and Wilton 2006b, p.237.

Wilton 1979, pp.367–73 nos.583–631.

See Warrell 1989, p.64, and Wilton 2006a, pp.92, 93.

Wilton 1979, pp.409–17 nos.930–990.

See Warrell 1989, p.64.

Warrell and Perkins 1988, p.16.

See Warrell 1999, p.30.

Ibid., quoting Walter Thornbury, The Life of J.M.W. Turner, R.A. Founded on Letters and Papers Furnished by his Friends and Fellow-Academicians, London 1862, vol.I, p.233.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The House and Grounds at East Cowes Castle 1827’, subset, November 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/the-house-and-grounds-at-east-cowes-castle-r1182665, accessed 24 April 2024.

Galleries

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