JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER, R.A. (LONDON 1775-1851)

Turner visited Waltham Cross in 1794. Two pencil drawings of the cross and neighbouring inn are in the Tate Gallery, D00355 TBXXII B and D00356 TBXXII C. Another version of the present drawing, executed in grey and blue wash was sold Sotheby's, London, 16 March 1978, lot 177. Turner exhibited The Remains of Waltham Abbey at the Royal Academy, 1796, no. 702, see A. Wilton, The Life and Works of J.M.W. Turner, London, 1979, no. 144.

Waltham in Hertfordshire was one of twelve places at which King Edward I built memorial crosses marking the resting-places along the route taken by the cortège bringing the body of his Queen, Eleanor of Castile, from Harby, Leicestershire, to Westminster Abbey. Waltham Cross was erected in 1291. By the end of the eighteenth century it had become celebrated as an antiquarian monument of great interest, and was drawn by a number of topographers.