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 North-West, with Figures in the Foreground by the New Moon 1827

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘East Cowes Castle from the North-West, with Figures in the Foreground by the New Moon’ 1827
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
East Cowes Castle from the North-West, with Figures in the Foreground by the New Moon 1827
D20843
Turner Bequest CCXXVII a 40
Chalk, ink and pencil on blue wove paper, 142 x 191 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Inscribed in red ink ‘40’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXXVII(a) 40’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Although Finberg described this view of East Cowes Castle as including figures ‘on the terrace’,1 they appear to be some way off from the formal gardens immediately surrounding the house, seen here from the north-west, with the wooded grounds falling away to the valley of the River Medina on the right. Compare the slighter figures in a similar view (Tate D20821; Turner Bequest CCXXVII a 18). With the suggestion of the upper half of a wheel at the bottom left here, they may be accompanied by a small cart or carriage.
This is among dozens of blue paper studies made in and around East Cowes Castle, presumably during the same 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, where other moonlit scenes are noted.
1
Finberg 1909, II, p.701.
Verso:
Blank

Matthew Imms
November 2015

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘East Cowes Castle from the North-West, with Figures in the Foreground by the New 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-north-west-with-figures-in-the-r1182706, accessed 24 April 2024.