J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > County Durham and Northumberland 1817 > Raby Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Valley with Houses and a Distant Bridge, Probably in County Durham or Northumberland 1817

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Valley with Houses and a Distant Bridge, Probably in County Durham or Northumberland’ 1817
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 15 Recto:
A Valley with Houses and a Distant Bridge, Probably in County Durham or Northumberland 1817
D40764
Turner Bequest
Pencil on white wove paper, 232 x 328 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Heath’ towards top left, ‘P’ centre left, ‘G’ and ‘G’ at centre, ‘G Path’ and ‘[?G round] plantation’ bottom left, and ‘Old M’ bottom right
Inscribed in pencil ‘20, a’ top left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This drawing continues onto folio 14 verso (D12311; CLVI 29); see the entry for the latter for a discussion of the possible location of the view. There is a separate study of the buildings running into the gutter on the skyline in the contemporary Durham, North Shore sketchbook (Tate D12445; Turner Bequest CLVII 92).
The present sketch is not listed in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory,1 at least not in terms of being the other side of his page ‘20’, now bound as the verso of the present leaf (D12294; CLVI 20). It is continuous with the drawing on folio 14 verso opposite (D12311; CLVI 29) as now bound. However, Finberg brackets the latter page, clearly identified by part of it having been ‘cut off’, with his page ‘28a’ as ‘Hilly landscape with houses’, yet that page, folio 32 verso (D12310; CLVI 28a) is blank. This problem appears to be symptomatic of confusion as to the numbering and sequence of pages, some or all of which may have been loose in 1909 (see the introduction to the sketchbook).

Matthew Imms
February 2010

1
See A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.448.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Valley with Houses and a Distant Bridge, Probably in County Durham or Northumberland 1817 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2010, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-valley-with-houses-and-a-distant-bridge-probably-in-county-r1139478, accessed 23 April 2024.