Turner in Tottenham
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    • The Windus Turner Collection >
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      • EH Baily RA
      • John Constable
      • Rowland Hill
      • William Hobson
      • Luke Howard
      • Priscilla Wakefield
  • About
    • Background
    • John Ruskin & Windus Collection >
      • Two Turner Collectors; Friends of Ruskin
    • Visitors to the Collection
    • Auctions >
      • Christie's June 1842
      • Christie's June 1853
      • Christie's March 1859
      • Christie's July 1862
      • 1868 Sale after Windus death
    • Images and credits
    • Thanks
  • JMW Turner
    • The Windus Turner Collection >
      • Picturesque views >
        • England and Wales >
          • Charles Heath
          • Carisbrooke Castle
          • Richmond from the moors
          • Straits of Dover
        • Southern Coast >
          • Brighthelmston, Sussex
      • The Epicurean
      • Finden's Lord Byron
      • The Keepsake
      • Walter Scott >
        • Abbotsford
      • Later large watercolours
      • Marine Views (unpublished series)
    • Turner collection recreated >
      • Frames
      • Still framed?
      • The Windus Commissions
    • Turner oil paintings in the Collection >
      • Calais sands
      • The Tondos
      • Going to the ball
      • Later paintings
    • Letters to Windus
    • Turner Bequests: Henry Vaughan
    • Twickenham home
    • The Eccentric Mr Turner
    • Talks on Turner in Tottenham
  • PRB
    • Ford Madox Brown
    • Holman Hunt
    • Millais
    • Rossetti
    • Ruskin and the PRB
  • & Others
    • Blake
    • Thomas Girtin
  • BG Windus
    • Family & inheritance >
      • Ansley Windus
      • Thomas Windus
    • Landowner
    • Places >
      • All Hallows
      • Holy Trinity
      • Tottenham High Cross
      • Rodmell, East Sussex
    • People >
      • EH Baily RA
      • John Constable
      • Rowland Hill
      • William Hobson
      • Luke Howard
      • Priscilla Wakefield

The collection recreated: Turner's watercolours

Picture
The Library at Tottenham, the seat of B. G. Windus, Esq John Scarlett Davis, 1835 © British Museum
BG Windus commissioned John Scarlett Davis to paint his collection in Library in his home in Tottenham.  Of the thirty-one drawings on display in this Davis's view, twenty can be easily identified, and other two or three tentatively so, while the identity of the others is masked by the oblique angle at which they hang or the reflectivity of the glass covering them.  The paintings  identified by the art historian, Eric Shanes, are listed below.  The painting by Scarlett Davis is now in the British Museum.
The Arts Union 1839 writing about the watercolours in the Windus collection by JMW Turner:
It is, in all events, utterly impossible to inspect these drawings without being satisfied of his wonderful genius. He is largely indebted to Mr Windus for determining a matter about which - strangely - there is some doubt, for many just critics and sensible persons turn, dissatisfied, from what they consider the exaggerated deformities of his later works. We are not of those who do so; we can see in his wildest perpetrations proofs of the highest talent, and believe he has painted nothing he had not seen - nothing that is not TRUE. In this collection, however, while there is ample to maintain his right to rank as the first among living artists, and scarcely second to any among the dead, there is not one of which the least imaginative, or the most jealous of altering fact, can for a moment disapprove.
The paintings listed below have been identified in the watercolour BG Windus commissioned in 1835 from John Scarlett Davis 
The Library at Tottenham, the seat of B. G. Windus, Esq
Right wall: from Right to Left
The England and Wales series:

Top row:
Exeter
Entrance to Fowey Harbour
Richmond [from the moors]
Okehampton, Devonshire

Bottom row:
Saltash
Kilgarren Castle
Trematon Castle
Great Yarmouth

On the chairs are:
(near) Palace of La Belle Gabrielle
(far) Alnwick Castle


On the same wall beyond the door, and partly hidden by it, are two drawings which given the hanging of works on this side of the room and the facing-wall, would also appear to be England and Wales watercolours.

These could be:
Top row: Straits of Dover (left)
Bottom row: Penmaen-Mawr (right)

End Wall: from Right to Left
The England and Wales series:

Top Row
Malvern Abbey and Gate
Coast from Folkestone to Dover
? Stoneyhurst
Holy Island

Bottom row:
Either side of the wall beneath them appear to be the Southern Coast series drawings of
(right) Minehead
(left) Corfe Castle

Left hand wall
The identities of the furthest seven drawings on this wall are obscured by reflections and the angle at which they hang,
but many of the paintings  closest to the left edge of the painting have been identified.
The Southern Coast series:

At the edge of the painting:
Top row: unidentified
Bottom row: Teignmouth

To the right of the above are:
Top row: Bow and Arrow Castle
Bottom row: Land's End (untraced)
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To the left of the fireplace is:
Osterspey and Feltzen on the Rhine
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Over the fireplace is the large 1818 watercolour of Hastings from the sea

I am now engaged on a very difficult subject, the Interior of the Library of Mr Windus,
who has it filled with about fifty Turners, and when you come to town
​we will go down and see him (he lives in Tottenham), and I can ensure you a treat.
John Scarlett Davis
To complete the watercolour Scarlett Davis included Windus's son, William, and daughter, Mary.

For the current locations and copyright of the paintings click here
Picture
Only one of the great many books on view is titled. It stands upright on the left, a large editon of Faust.
As Eric Shanes writes:

 Perhaps Scarlett Davis knew that the medieval alchemist had turned base metals into gold.
Turner certainly achieved something comparable on the walls up in Tottenham.


Source: Eric Shanes, Picture Notes Turner Studies, III, 2, Winter 1984
Picture
To see the listing of all of the works of JMW Turner in the Windus Collection
click below
The Windus Turner Collection
© COPYRIGHT 2019. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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