present owner of these drawings, but the water-colour of the old church was exhibited at the Old Masters (R.A.) in 1887. There is, however, in the National Gallery a pencil outline of the new church, squared for enlargement, which shows no signs of training in the practical work of the architect’s profession.
The earliest of Turner’s sketch-books now in the National Gallery was in use during the period of this connection with Mr. Hardwick. A pencil sketch of a church by the river, easily recognisable as Isleworth Old Church, with barges moored beside the bank, is probably the note from which the water-colour was made which Mr. Hardwick’s grandson lent to the Old Masters in 1887. Most of the other drawings, however, appear to have been made during a stay near Oxford. There are sketches of Clifton Nuneham (then Nuneham Courtenay), near Abingdon; of Radley Hall, between Abingdon and Oxford; of a distant view of Oxford; a sketch of a ruined tower which may represent Pope’s Tower in the ruins of the Harcourts’ house at Stanton Harcourt, and two drawings of Sunningwell Church, a village about two miles from Radley and three from Abingdon. As Turner’s uncle, Joseph Mallord William Marshall, his mother’s elder brother, after whom he was named, was then living at Sunningwell, it is probable that these drawings were the result of a summer holiday spent with his relative.
These drawings represent Turner’s first attempts to draw from nature. They are characterised by an absence of blundering and a sense of pictorial logic and requirements which could only belong to a beginner whose eye and hand had already been disciplined in the production of works of art. One cannot but feel that the mould into which the immediate experiences of the artist were to be cast had already been firmly set before his pencil was placed upon the paper, nay, before the particular sights in question were actually seen. In other words, the pictorial formula into which the material gathered from nature was to be worked up had been clearly determined before the artist set out to gather such material for himself. Turner’s confidence in the unbounded felicity of immediate contact with nature was not commensurate with that of modern artistic theorists. He does indeed entrust himself to the open fields, but it is not until he has armed himself with a stout though flexible panoply of artistic convention.