Joseph Mallord William TurnerThe River Calder, Whalley Bridge and Village 1808

This subject continues to the right on a strip of folio 16 (D06836; Turner Bequest CIII 7). For Turner’s visit to Whalley in 1808 and his drawings of the bridge over the River Calder and the ruins of Whalley Abbey, see Introduction to the sketchbook. In his 1910 book, Finberg compared this drawing with another in the sketchbook, now folio 18 (D06837; Turner Bequest CIII 8), concluding that while it was the better of the two as ‘a representation of the actual place’, it was ‘just this topographical and objective adequacy which constituted the defect of this fine drawing from Turner’s point of view’.1 For this reason, Finberg believed, Turner chose the other as the basis for his picture Whalley Bridge and Abbey, Lancashire: Dyers Washing and Drying Cloth (private collection)2 exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1811.

Verso:

Blank. Inscribed by Ruskin ‘161’.