JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER, R.A.

(1775-1851)

Cote House near Bristol

c.1791

watercolour and pen on paper

29.2 x 25.5 cm

P.173

It was probably in the summer of 1791 that Turner, a student at the R.A. Schools, went to stay with his father's friend, John Narraway, a prosperous glue‑maker, in Bristol.

Turner's sketches of the surrounding countryside are recorded in the Bristol and Melmesbury sketchbook (Turner Bequest inventory VI). On page 17 Turner has written in pencil: 'Mr Fowler's on Durdum Downs near Bristol' and in ink, 'Captain Fowler, seat on Durdum Down near Bristol'. On the reverse is a watercolour outlined in brown ink depicting Cote House which formed the basis of the finished watercolour. Apart from the figures the view is essentially the same but there are minor differences in the central tower of the house and the gate is closed in the sketch. Captain Fowler may have been the drawing’s first owner or it may have been among several given by Turner to the Narraways.

Croft-Murray dates the drawing 1792-5 but Wilton more plausibly suggests c.1791; certainly the rather clumsy figures and the painting of the trees with strongly striated foliage are both characteristic of Turner’s earliest style.

PROVENANCE: T.W.R. Woodman; purchased from him by the Gallery in 1957 through the British Museum whose Keeper of Prints and Drawings, Edward Croft-Murray, had published the watercolour in 1949 and was also advisor to the Gallery.

EXHIBITIONS: J.M.W. Turner, London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1953, no.111; Watercolours and Drawings from the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford, London, Thos. Agnew & Sons Ltd, 1962, no.9.

REFERENCES: E. Croft-Murray, ‘An unpublished early Watercolour by J.M.W Turner, Cote House, Bristol’, Burlington Magazine, vol. 90, 1948, pp.107-109, fig.2; A. Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, London, 1979, repr. no.21.

Extract taken from Watercolours and Drawings, Cecil Higgins Art Gallery by Evelyn Joll.

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