Costello, Leo2020-04-232021-05-012020-052020-04-21May 2020Celeste, Jane Evans. "Perspectives on History and Heritage: J.M.W. Turner's Estate Views." (2020) Diss., Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/108370">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/108370</a>.https://hdl.handle.net/1911/108370From the moment the ground is broken and the cornerstone laid, a British country estate enters into a complex interrelation between past, present, and future. For generations, these stately dwellings provided a home for the traditional understanding of heritage: inheriting family property. Yet these houses also served as fundamental sites for advancing heritage on a larger scale: building and preserving a national history. Even today, the British country estate provides a throughline from the past, to the present, to the future. To better understand the complex processes by which heritage is created, preserved, and disseminated, this dissertation examines the estate views of J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851). By considering his paintings and sketches of British country homes, I draw out four perspectives, four different visual and cultural approaches to history and heritage in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Through this taxonomy, I not only reveal the pictorial negotiations taking place within Turner’s estate views, but I disentangle the various webs of influence affecting these perspectives on multiple levels: the personal, historical, and socio-political. Accordingly, I seek to reevaluate the relationship between our current methodologies for studying and conserving history and heritage and those of Turner’s era. My chosen primary materials—Turner’s views of Fonthill, Stourhead, Harewood, and Farnley—have not been considered as a discrete set of works, despite the fact that they established an important clientele for the entirety of Turner’s career. Commissions at each of these estates brought Turner into contact with aristocratic patrons with decided interest in history. Yet as Turner recorded his patrons’ perspectives, these views also became part of his own past, present, and future. As my project makes clear, Turner’s estate views came to influence his later work in powerful and unexpected ways. My methodology is at once historical, art historical, and literary. I deconstruct the country house commission in order to reconstruct a multistoried rendering of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century approaches to history and heritage. By examining the physical estates and primary source documents related to both the patron and artist—estate records, correspondence, and contemporary publications—in conjunction with Turner’s preparatory drawings and finished works, we gain a much clearer picture of the patrons, of their relationship with Turner, and of the results of these commissions in the short and long terms.application/pdfengCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.J.M.W. Turnerestate viewsEnglandhistoryheritagecountry housesWilliam BeckfordFonthill AbbeyStourheadSir Richard Colt HoareHarewood HouseLascellesFarnley HallWalter FawkesThesis2020-04-23