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Lot Essay
Turner visited Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, the seat of the Duke of Marlborough, in the summer of 1830, while travelling around the Midlands to collect material for his illustrations for Charles Heath’s publication Picturesque Views in England and Wales, which he worked on between 1826 and 1838. In his ‘Kenilworth Sketchbook’, now part of the Turner Bequest at Tate Britain (Inv. TB CCXXXVIII), he recorded in pencil studies the architecture of the Palace, built to the designs of Sir John Vanbrugh between 1705 and 1722, as well as the surrounding park and gardens later designed by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. The 18th century Grand Bridge at Blenheim, built by Vanbrugh in 1708, was more than 120 metres in length and some fifteen metres tall, with a central arch that was thirty metres wide. When Capability Brown transformed Blenheim’s grounds in the 1760s, he built two dams and a huge lake, which flooded the lower half of Vanbrugh’s bridge.
On his return to London, Turner began to consider possible compositions for a large watercolour of Blenheim and its surroundings. This eventually resulted in the finished watercolour of Blenheim Palace and Park, Oxfordshire, painted in the late autumn and winter of 1830-1831 and today in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (Inv. 1.20, Wilton, op.cit., p.399, no.846, (where dated c.1832), E. Shanes, Turner’s England, London, 1990, pp.220-221, no.189; J. Hamilton, Turner’s Britain, Birmingham, 2003-2004, pp.163-164, pl.138). The same view also appears, engraved by William Radclyffe, in Picturesque Views in England and Wales, published in 1833 (impressions of the engraving are in the collections of the Tate and the British Museum).
The present sheet may be grouped with a large number of rapidly drawn watercolours by Turner that have been defined, by Alexander Finberg in his 1909 inventory of the Turner Bequest at the Tate, as ‘Colour Beginnings’. Finberg was referring to a miscellaneous group of 386 watercolours in the Turner Bequest - including numerous colour sketches, as well as preparatory studies, test sheets, and finished and unfinished watercolours - spanning a period of more than thirty years of the artist’s career, in which colour and mood take precedence over form. They demonstrate Turner’s fascination with atmosphere and mood, and his ability to almost abstract a landscape in order to focus on those elements. Intended as prompts to himself to return to later, very few of these watercolours are extant outside of the Turner bequest as Turner rarely sold them during his lifetime. The present sheet is an unusually large example of a colour beginning, with all the looseness and ‘impressionism’ associated with them. We see Turner’s brushstrokes throughout, giving an extraordinary sense of immediacy and closeness to the artist.
The present watercolour depicts Blenheim Palace and its grounds from the Woodstock Gate, the main entrance to the park. Two other ‘colour beginnings’ of Blenheim, both in the Turner Bequest at the Tate, depict the house and its grounds. One of these (Inv. TB CCLXIII 365; Wilton, op.cit., p.179, fig.193; Shanes, op.cit., p.221, fig.21) is quite close in composition to both the finished watercolour and the present sheet, while the other sketch shows the park at Blenheim from a different viewpoint, looking southeast, across the lake (Inv. TB CCLXIII 366; The watercolour is visible online in M. Imms, ‘Blenheim Palace and Park c.1830–2 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2013, in D. Blayney Brown, ed., J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-blenheim-palace-and-park-r1144239). Both works share with the present sheet a great sense of freedom and a warm palette, invoking summer.
A recent owner of the present sheet was the Conservative politician Philip Cunliffe-Lister, 1st Earl of Swinton (1884-1972), who was a prominent figure in British politics and a government minister from the 1920s to the 1950s.
We are grateful to Ian Warrell for his help in preparing this catalogue entry.
On his return to London, Turner began to consider possible compositions for a large watercolour of Blenheim and its surroundings. This eventually resulted in the finished watercolour of Blenheim Palace and Park, Oxfordshire, painted in the late autumn and winter of 1830-1831 and today in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (Inv. 1.20, Wilton, op.cit., p.399, no.846, (where dated c.1832), E. Shanes, Turner’s England, London, 1990, pp.220-221, no.189; J. Hamilton, Turner’s Britain, Birmingham, 2003-2004, pp.163-164, pl.138). The same view also appears, engraved by William Radclyffe, in Picturesque Views in England and Wales, published in 1833 (impressions of the engraving are in the collections of the Tate and the British Museum).
The present sheet may be grouped with a large number of rapidly drawn watercolours by Turner that have been defined, by Alexander Finberg in his 1909 inventory of the Turner Bequest at the Tate, as ‘Colour Beginnings’. Finberg was referring to a miscellaneous group of 386 watercolours in the Turner Bequest - including numerous colour sketches, as well as preparatory studies, test sheets, and finished and unfinished watercolours - spanning a period of more than thirty years of the artist’s career, in which colour and mood take precedence over form. They demonstrate Turner’s fascination with atmosphere and mood, and his ability to almost abstract a landscape in order to focus on those elements. Intended as prompts to himself to return to later, very few of these watercolours are extant outside of the Turner bequest as Turner rarely sold them during his lifetime. The present sheet is an unusually large example of a colour beginning, with all the looseness and ‘impressionism’ associated with them. We see Turner’s brushstrokes throughout, giving an extraordinary sense of immediacy and closeness to the artist.
The present watercolour depicts Blenheim Palace and its grounds from the Woodstock Gate, the main entrance to the park. Two other ‘colour beginnings’ of Blenheim, both in the Turner Bequest at the Tate, depict the house and its grounds. One of these (Inv. TB CCLXIII 365; Wilton, op.cit., p.179, fig.193; Shanes, op.cit., p.221, fig.21) is quite close in composition to both the finished watercolour and the present sheet, while the other sketch shows the park at Blenheim from a different viewpoint, looking southeast, across the lake (Inv. TB CCLXIII 366; The watercolour is visible online in M. Imms, ‘Blenheim Palace and Park c.1830–2 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2013, in D. Blayney Brown, ed., J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-blenheim-palace-and-park-r1144239). Both works share with the present sheet a great sense of freedom and a warm palette, invoking summer.
A recent owner of the present sheet was the Conservative politician Philip Cunliffe-Lister, 1st Earl of Swinton (1884-1972), who was a prominent figure in British politics and a government minister from the 1920s to the 1950s.
We are grateful to Ian Warrell for his help in preparing this catalogue entry.