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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Isle of Wight 1827 > The House and Grounds at East Cowes ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner East Cowes Castle from the West through Trees, with Figures in the Foreground by the Full Moon 1827

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘East Cowes Castle from the West through Trees, with Figures in the Foreground by the Full Moon’ 1827
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
East Cowes Castle from the West through Trees, with Figures in the Foreground by the Full Moon 1827
D20809
Turner Bequest CCXXVII a 6
Gouache and ink on blue wove paper, 142 x 193 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Inscribed in red ink ‘6’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXXVII(a) 6’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
From the woods west of East Cowes Castle, the full moon rises beside the tower of the garden room south-east of the main house. A ghostly couple in the foreground are of the sort Finberg dubbed ‘lovers’ in similar studies;1 see Tate D20815, D20834, D20835, D20837 (Turner Bequest CCXXVII a 12, 31, 32, 34).
There is a similar view in ink alone on the verso (D40306). These are among dozens of blue paper studies made in and around East Cowes Castle, presumably in the course of a single visit. For more on the various aspects of the house (demolished in about 1950), and its lost grounds as depicted by Turner, see the Introduction to this subsection.

Matthew Imms
November 2015

1
See Finberg 1909, II, p.701.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘East Cowes Castle from the West through Trees, with Figures in the Foreground by the Full Moon 1827 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, 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/joseph-mallord-william-turner-east-cowes-castle-from-the-west-through-trees-with-figures-r1182671, accessed 26 April 2024.