Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries
Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries
Joseph Mallord William Turner, R.A.
Canterbury from the West Gate
Auction Closed
July 6, 10:38 AM GMT
Estimate
4,000 - 6,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Joseph Mallord William Turner, R.A.
London 1775 - 1851
Canterbury from the West Gate
Pencil on wove paper
227 by 292 mm
John Pound, her son;
Lawrence W. Hodson, Compton Hall by 1884,
thence by descent until 1978,
sale, London, Sotheby’s, 30 November 1978, part of lot 97,
where acquired by Richard Feigen (1930-2021),
with R.L. Feigen & Co., New York;
with Richard L. Feigen & Co., New York,
where acquired by the present owner
In this fluid and confident on-the-spot drawing Turner shows Canterbury's medieval West Gate, with its adjacent walls and the Guildhall to the right. The Cathedral's West towers loom over the rooftops.
This drawing originally formed part of Turner's last sketchbook, a loosely bound group of seventeen pencil drawings, that he used in 1845-1846 to record subjects in Canterbury, Rochester and Maidstone.
Ian Warrell has suggested that ‘in his final years, Turner revisited subjects he had first seen as boy and there is a sense of him looking back across the years to connect with his younger self.’1 Indeed, Turner had had connections with Kent for the whole of his life and as early as 1792 he made The West Gate, from the River Stour, a watercolour that is now part of the Turner Bequest at Tate Britain.2
1. I. Warrell, Turner's Sketchbooks, London 2014, p. 233
2. TB XV E