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 > Cowes, the River Medina and Shipping > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner East Cowes Castle across the River Medina, from Cowes 1827

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘East Cowes Castle across the River Medina, from Cowes’ 1827
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
East Cowes Castle across the River Medina, from Cowes 1827
D24868
Turner Bequest CCLX 32
Pencil, gouache, ink and watercolour on blue wove paper, 140 x 191 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLX – 32’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is among dozens of blue paper studies presumably made in connection with the Cowes Regatta events in the late summer of 1827; see the Introduction to this subsection for others possibly featuring East Cowes Castle, seen here on the skyline to the south-east above the River Medina, as it does in the background of the painting East Cowes Castle, the Seat of J. Nash, Esq.; the Regatta Starting for their Moorings, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1828 (Victoria and Albert Museum, London).1
Although exhibited in the nineteenth century as an English subject, like several others in the present subsection this drawing was categorised in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory in one of the sections of works on blue paper ‘mostly connected with “French Rivers”’.2
1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.150–1 no.243, pl.247 (colour).
2
See Finberg 1909, II, pp.806–13, CCLX, ‘Pencil and ink on blue paper: mostly connected with “French Rivers” series’, c.1830; but see Butlin, Wilton and Gage 1974, p.102, Warrell 1989, p.148, Warrell 1991, p.65 and Warrell 1999, pp.30, 253 note 84, linking this sheet to the Isle of Wight.
Technical notes:
As distinct from the diluted tonal wash Turner used in the foreground, on the hulls and sails and on the distant hillside, there are signs of water damage on the left where the ink has spread and run within a regular area at the centre, apparently indicating that the edges of the sheet were protected by a mount at the time of the 1928 flood at the Tate Gallery.
Verso:
Blank; inscribed in red ink ?by John Ruskin ‘[?Fr] 532’ bottom left; inscribed in pencil ‘44b’ right of centre and ‘cclx.32’ bottom right; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram over ‘CCLX – 32’ right of centre.

Matthew Imms
November 2015

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘East Cowes Castle across the River Medina, from Cowes 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-across-the-river-medina-from-cowes-r1183444, accessed 19 September 2024.