Mr. J M W Turner goes fishing and collects ships made of mutton bones

Last week Jan and I made our first train journey in months. We had bought tickets for a visit in March to Sandycombe Lodge, J M W Turner’s Italianate country house in St Margarets, west London, but our visit was postponed because of the lockdown. A friend managed to re-book our visit for 23 July, the first day that the house had opened since March.

 

Sandycombe Lodge, front elevation. Note that windows were eliminated after construction of the central structure

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) was the son of William, a barber and wigmaker who had a shop in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, and Mary, a butcher’s daughter. Mary became mentally ill when Turner was ten years old. She died in 1804 in Bethlehem Hospital (Bedlam). Turner was a prodigy. He entered the Royal Academy of Art school aged 14. His first painting was accepted for the Academy’s summer exhibition a year later. He was appointed professor of perspective in 1804, rather poignantly the year his mother died.

 

Sandycombe Lodge, rear elevation. Note the decorative brickwork

Design sketches for Sandycombe Lodge, c.1809-1811, Tate

Turner’s studio and London residence (now demolished) was in Harley Street. He bought two plots of land in St Margarets, one for his house and gardens, another for the pony that pulled his trap. He designed the house himself, apparently with advice from his architect friend John Soane, whose own house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields is today a museum. The arches in the hallway of Sandycombe Lodge are said to be Soanian in style. The central portion of the house was built first. This was a very small residence: a basement kitchen, a ground floor entrance hall and sitting room, and two bedrooms on the first floor. An elegant staircase occupied a substantial part of the ground and first floors. Two wings (a dining room and a little parlour) were added later. Based on close study of the brickwork, conservators have learned that Turner changed his mind as construction proceeded: he was clearly more concerned with getting the design just right than with any costs involved in adjustments mid-works.

The staircase

The original plot, acquired in 1807, was some 2 acres. The garden included two ponds. Apparently, Turner was fond of fishing. The house is not far from the Thames, so he could bring his catch back from a fishing trip and keep it alive in the ponds until he fancied it for supper. The house was his escape from the busy life of a successful and fashionable painter. His father ran both the Harley Street house/studio and the St Margaret’s home. He was also the cook. According to our guide, Turner was careful with money. His father walked from St Margarets to Harley Street, which Google tells me is a journey of some 9^1/2 miles, until he discovered that a passing wagon or cart would take him in exchange for a glass of gin.

 

Design sketch for Sandycombe Lodge, c.1809-1811, Tate

Sandycombe Lodge floor plan

The house is first recorded in the Rates Book in 1813. Turner owned it until 1826, by which time his father had become too infirm to manage both houses. Subsequent owners sold much of the land and the condition of the house deteriorated. During World War II the house was a factory for the manufacture of airmen’s goggles. Shortly after the end of the war, the local council intended to demolish it, but it was bought and saved by Ann Livermore, a musicologist who wrote a history of Spanish music, and her husband Harold, a specialist in Portuguese history. However, they lacked the funds to conserve the house. It was in a very bad state when the Livermores died. By this stage nothing survived of the interior as it was when Turner lived in it. Turner’s sketches of design ideas for the house survive in Tate Britain. The only record of the finished house is a drawing by William Havell, a friend of Turner. 

Sandycombe Lodge, after William Havell, engraved by W. B. Cooke, published 1814, Tate

Conservators were able to find fragments of evidence to guide their work. For example, small traces of marbling (real marble was too costly) in the hallway enabled conservation to reproduce its original appearance. Conservators also know from documentary evidence that Turner had some model ships in glass cases. Apparently, French prisoners of war (this was the time of the Napoleonic wars) made models, mostly from mutton (a large part of a prisoner’s diet) bone. Two enthusiasts have donated models of the type Turner would have owned (but not made of mutton bone) in two glass cases in the sitting room.

 

J. M. W. Turner, Windsor Castle from the River, oil on mahogany veneer, c.1807

Turner’s father’s bedroom is now an small exhibition space. We were lucky to find that the initial exhibition had been extended because of the lockdown. On display were five oil sketches of Thames landscapes on mahogany. When Turner lived in Isleworth, he bought a boat as his floating Thames studio. The common practice at the time was to sketch landscapes in pencil and then to paint the scene in oils in the studio. Turner was innovative in sketching in oils. One of the landscapes is local to us: Windsor Castle seen from the Thames just upstream from where Eton Bridge and the Eton boat houses now stand. Turner clearly knew how to make the most of his materials. One of the sketches on display uses the wood grain to represent ripples on the water. This must be the smallest exhibition space in London, but since only two people at a time are allowed into the room, visitors have time to examine the works closely at leisure.

One of the two wings. This is the dining room wing