A Beech Wood with Gypsies round a Campfire

When Turner died in December 1851, the contents of his studio were caught up in a long dispute over his will, and in the end his paintings went to the nation. This little oil sketch took a quieter road. It belonged to Sarah Danby, with whom he had two daughters, and on 9 September 1854 she sold it to the engraver Charles Turner, no relation, together with 17 drawings, for three pounds and three shillings for the lot. It then passed down through the engraver's family for more than a century, until a descendant sent it to Sotheby's in 1981 and the Fitzwilliam acquired it that same year. It is one of a group of sketches made around 1800 in the beech woods at Knockholt in Kent, painted in oil on a sheet of paper later laid down on a panel. Low in the left corner, under the arching branches, a small group sits around a campfire, one of them in red.