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1 of 253523 objects
The Mary Tudor Tower c.1765
Pencil, pen and ink and watercolour | 23.6 x 33.6 cm (sheet of paper) | RCIN 914552
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A watercolour drawing of Mary Tudor Tower in the Lower Ward, Windsor Castle, seen from the corner of St George's Chapel. In the foreground, in shade, a pieman with a basket on his head and a dwarf carrying a goose in a sling. Inscribed on the back of the mount, possibly in the artist's hand, 'Windsor. View of the Governor of the Poor Knights' Tower and the Garter Chamber'. The sheet of paper is circumscribed with a black line, and is mounted on a gold, green and grey wash line bordered mount of a type associated with works acquired at the Joseph Banks sale in 1876 (for others, see for example RCINS 914553, 914555, 914534).
Unlike for other watercolours from the Banks collection, neither a related bodycolour nor a pencil outline drawing of the same view is known. The two figures at the centre are reduced versions of the same figures in a sheet of studies at the British Museum (LB 137(20). They also appear in a bodycolour view of the Henry VIII Gateway in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, and an aquatint view of Guy Fawkes Day. An outline etching of the Mary Tudor Tower is in the British Museum (189*.b.2).
The Mary Tudor Tower and adjoining houses were built in the fourteenth century as the belfry for St George's Chapel and accommodation for the choristers. The houses were converted into accommodation for the Military Knights in the sixteenth century. The central tower (now the Mary Tudor Tower) became the home of the Governor of the Knights. To the right of the tower is an apartment bearing the Garter Badge still seen today. In the eighteenth century this was described as the Garter Chamber (today the Garter House). The brick wall running along the front was rebuilt in stone in 1840. A later study of the Tower from Castle Hill is RCIN 917873.Provenance
Sir Joseph Banks; Sir Wyndham Knatchbull (sale, Christie's 23 May 1876, lot 19); purchased (7 gns.) by Richard Holmes as Royal Librarian
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Medium and techniques
Pencil, pen and ink and watercolour
Measurements
23.6 x 33.6 cm (sheet of paper)
29.5 x 39.6 cm (mount)
Other number(s)
RL 14552