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, with Figures among Trees around the Steps below the Conservatory 1827

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘East Cowes Castle from the West, with Figures among Trees around the Steps below the Conservatory’ 1827
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
East Cowes Castle from the West, with Figures among Trees around the Steps below the Conservatory 1827
D20832
Turner Bequest CCXXVII a 29
Chalk and ink on blue wove paper, 140 x 190 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Inscribed in red ink ‘29’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXXVII(a) 29’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The setting is the foot of the steps below the smaller of East Cowes Castle’s two conservatories, with the arcade of its south-western façade at the centre. The octagonal white tower to its right was actually some way beyond, across a lawn level with the top of the steps, with the larger conservatory lightly indicated running to the south-east beyond.
This drawing can be associated with the painting Boccaccio Relating the Tale of the Birdcage, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1828 (Tate N00507);1 see under Tate D20844 (Turner Bequest CCXXVII a 41) for the subject and similar studies. The present sketch is roughly comparable, with an elegant crowd among trees below white towers, but in the upright painting they have ventured further into the woods and the house (or a loose approximation of it) is shown in the distance.
This is 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.
1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.151–2 no.244, pl.245 (colour).
Verso:
Blank; inscribed in pencil ‘Box 97’ bottom right.

Matthew Imms
November 2015

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘East Cowes Castle from the West, with Figures among Trees around the Steps below the Conservatory 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-with-figures-among-trees-r1182695, accessed 25 April 2024.