Kilgarren Castle, Pembrokeshire
Joseph Mallord William Turner, RA (London 1775 - Chelsea 1851)
Category
Ephemera
Date
1798 - 1799 (exh at RA)
Materials
Canvas, Wood, Oil paint
Place of origin
Great Britain
Collection
Cragside, Northumberland
NT 1230222.3
Caption
Turner visited Kilgarren Castle on his tour of south Wales in 1798. He painted a number of views of the Castle, exhibiting 'Kilgarren Castle on the Twyvey, Hazy Sunrise previous to a Sultry Day' at the Royal Academy in 1799. Lord Armstrong bought a painting of Kilgarren Castle in 1878 from the collection of Munro of Novar, an important patron of Turner. Armstrong’s Kilgarren Castle was exhibited as a Turner at the Guildhall in London in 1899 alongside another version of the composition, which the artist John MacWhirter, after seeing the two paintings together, regarded as the original. When the major paintings in Lord Armstrong’s collection were put up for sale at Christie’s in 1910, Kilgarren Castle was among them. It did not reach its reserve, however, and was not sold, remaining to this day in the private collection of the Armstrong family. By a happy coincidence, the National Trust was bequeathed the present version – the very painting MacWhirter believed to be the original – by Lady Mildred Fitzgerald, in 1970. It was displayed at Wordsworth House in Cumbria before being transferred to Cragside.
Summary
A Royal Academy of Arts, London, W.1 label for the Turner Bicentenary Exhibition 1974-75 with serial number 117 from the back of the oil painting on canvas, Kilgarren Castle, by Joseph Mallord William Turner, RA, (London 1775 - Chelsea 1851), 1798-99.
Credit line
National Trust Collections, Cragside (the Armstrong Collection). Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax with assistance from the National Land Fund and allocated to the National Trust, 1977.
Makers and roles
Joseph Mallord William Turner, RA (London 1775 - Chelsea 1851), artist
References
Turner et la couleur, Hotel de Caumont (ed. Hazan), 2016, p.17, fig.4