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JMW Turner, Canterbury Gate, Christ Church
graphite and watercolour on paper,
10 in. x 16¼ in., 1799; Tate Collection

Turner’s painting captures Christ Church’s Canterbury Gate from Oriel Square. (As it happens, this is Canterbury Gate at Christ Church in Oxford and, conversely, there is a Christ Church Gate at Canterbury in Kent.)

Given the greenery of the vegetation, this is almost certainly not the work that inspired Betjeman to write his winter poem ‘On an Old-Fashioned Water-Colour of Oxford’:

Shines, billowing cold and gold from Cumnor Hurst,
A winter sunset on wet cobbles, where
By Canterbury Gate the fishtails flare.
Someone in Corpus reading for a first
Pulls down red blinds and flounders on, immers’d
In Hegel, heedless of the yellow glare
On porch and pinnacle and window square,
The brown stone crumbling where the skin has burst.

A late, last luncheon staggers out of Peck
And hires a hansom: from half-flooded grass
Returning athletes bark at what they see.
But we will mount the horse-tram’s upper deck
And wave salute to Buols’, as we pass
Bound for the Banbury Road in time for tea.

Published at 4:30 pm on Sunday 4 February 2024. Categories: Architecture Tags: , .
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