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JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER RA (1775-1851)
Clontarf Castle, Co. Dublin
Watercolour and bodycolour, 33 x 45cm
Provenance : Walter Fawkes of Farnley Hall, Turner’s Friend and Patron
Exhibited : “Turner Exhibition” January 1999 National Gallery of Ireland alongside watercolours by Turner from the Henry
Vaughan Bequest.
Literature :”The works of J.M.W. Turner at The National Gallery of Ireland” by Anne Hodge and Niamh Mac Nally 2012
illustrated P12.
This is Turner’s only known Irish view and dates circa 1816/7. It depicts Clontarf Castle which is situated in a coastal location
two miles from Dublin city centre and is now an hotel. It was then the seat of John Vernon whose daughter, Maria Sophia,
became the second wife of Turner’s patron and friend Walter Fawkes of Farnley Hall in 1816.
The Castle is set in parkland with peacocks,doves and young ladies conversing with an offiicer.
Until the watercolour’s rediscovery in 1989, the evidence for its existence was to be found in the Farnley Hall sketchbook
(TBCLIII, p11V) where Turner listed his watercolours drawn for Fawkes.
Under No. 36 is “Clontarf” (Previously read as “Caltarf” by A.J. Finberg) . There is no evidence that Turner ever visited
Ireland and it is thus likely that he interpreted a sketch of the castle by another hand, possibly that of Maria Sophia Fawkes
herself who was a talented amateur artist and that this was painted by Turner as a reminder for the new Mrs Fawkes of her
childhood home.
Clontarf Castle was built by the Knights Templar in the twelfth century and came into the possession of the Vernon fam-
ily in the seventeenth century. In the far right corner of the present watercolour is Clontarf Church erected on the site of a
monastery founded in 550AD. The present watercolour shows the castle before the additions commissioned by John Edward
Venables Vernon from the architect William Vitruvius Morrison in 1836 - 7.
€20000 - 40000
