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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner List of Works for Walter Fawkes (Inscription by Turner) c.1810

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 53 Recto:
List of Works for Walter Fawkes (Inscription by Turner) circa 1810
D06824
Turner Bequest CII 52
Inscribed by Turner in pencil (see main catalogue entry) on white wove paper, 115 x 76 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘52’ top right, running vertically
Stamped in black ‘CII 52’ top right, running vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
See Introduction to the sketchbook and note to folio 48 (D06814) for the discrepancy between the current folio number and Finberg’s.
Turner’s list reads:
Mill. finished
Mill. sketch
Bardon Tower
Armistice Rock
Farnley
Gordale
Strid
Weathercote
Bolton Abbey West
Lac de Thun
Lac de Geneve
Ps V
Bonneville
Ingleboro
Bolton
Blair’s Hut
Stourbeck
Mt. Blanc
8 Vevay
9 Grindelwald
10 Brintz
This list of works sold to or commissioned by Walter Fawkes expands the one inside the back cover of the sketchbook (D40668). While that list cites ten works paid for on 20 February, probably in 1809 or 1810, the present one adds further orders or works in progress. Turner probably drew it up around the time of his visit to Farnley in late summer 1810. A note in his Finance sketchbook (Tate D40900; Turner Bequest CXXII 4 verso) indicates that Fawkes owed him £1000 around this time.
Finberg’s identification of these items as intended for Fawkes is confirmed by the provenances of the recognisable subjects.1 All are presumably watercolours. The two ‘Mill’ subjects may include one of the two versions of Addingham Mill on the River Wharfe (Manchester Art Gallery and private collection)2 of which the latter was owned by Fawkes’s neighbour, Richard Hall, rector of Harewood. Alternatively, as Hill suggests, the subject may have been A View of Otley Mills, with the River Wharfe and Mill Weir (untraced).3 Fawkes told Turner ‘everybody is delighted with your Mill – I sit for a long time before it every day’.4 Barden Tower, on the Wharfe (private collection)5 has no provenance before 1908 but is presumably the work listed here and may have been made for Fawkes.
Finberg read the next work as ‘Armutic Rock’ but Matthew Imms has recognised that Turner’s word is ‘Armistice’, allowing it to be identified with Mont Blanc from Fort Roch, Val d’Aosta (private collection),6 his view of the scene as he remembered it from his visit during the Peace of Amiens in 1802. Turner’s notes on folio 1 (D07621) indicate that this had first been commissioned by Edward Lascelles of Harewood, but it was acquired instead by Fawkes and this new listing seems to be the first evidence of the change of plan. Turner’s emphasis on its ‘Armistice’ status suggests that he was already envisaging his wartime version of the same scene, The Battle of Fort Rock: Val d’Aouste, Piedmont, 1796 (Tate D04900; Turner Bequest LXXX G) which appeared at the Royal Academy in 1815.
The next two works are not certainly identifiable although the Farnley subject could be Farnley, Yorkshire, a Sketch exhibited by Fawkes at 45 Grosvenor Place, London in 1819 and 18207 but now untraced, and Hill has suggested that ‘Gordale’ might be the watercolour now known as Malham Cove (British Museum, London)8 or alternatively a finished version of the colour study of Gordale Scar (Tate D12113; Turner Bequest CLIV O).9 Next are The Strid, Bolton Abbey (untraced but see the pencil study, Tate D12119; Turner Bequest CLIV U)10 and Weathercote Cave (Sheffield Galleries and Museums Trust).11 ‘Bolton Abbey West’ is probably Bolton Abbey from the North (British Museum),12 as Hill suggests.13 The Swiss subjects are The Lake of Thun (on the London art market in 2007),14 Geneva (Salar Jung Museum, Hyderabad),15 probably an untraced or even unexecuted picture of the ‘Pisse Vache’ waterfall in the lower Rhône valley near Martigny, and Bonneville (on the London art market in 2007).16 There is no trace of a view of Ingleborough belonging to Fawkes unless it is the watercolour first recorded in the collection of Joseph Gillott (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut),17 based on a pencil drawing of the view from Chapel-le-Dale (Tate D02383; Turner Bequest LI P). The second Bolton is Bolton Abbey from the South (University of Liverpool).18 The following works are Mer de Glace, with Blair’s Hut (Courtauld Gallery, London),19 Fall of the Staubach, in the Valley of Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland (private collection),20 probably Mont Blanc, from the Bridge of St Martin, Sallenches (private collection),21 and certainly The Lake of Geneva from above Vevay (private collection).22 There is no record of a Fawkes view of Grindelwald while there are perhaps two candidates for the final work listed, Lake of Brienz, Moonlight (private collection)23 being possibly but not certainly identifiable with the Town of Brienz, Switzerland exhibited by Fawkes in 1819.24

David Blayney Brown
July 2007

1
A full (but sometimes misleading) manuscript catalogue of the Fawkes collection is Francis Hawksworth Fawkes, A Catalogue of the Oil Paintings and Water colour drawings and sketches in water colour by J:M:W: Turner, R:A: in the possession of F.H. Fawkes Esqr of Farnley Hall, Otley, Yorkshire AD: 1850, (National Art Library, London, Pressmark 86.EE.38).
2
Wilton 1979, p.363 nos.548–9.
3
Hill, Warburton, Tussey 1980, p.39; this watercolour was in the Ayscough Fawkes sale, Christie’s 27 June 1890, lot 88 (bt. Sedelmeyer).
4
Undated fragment of a letter, Tate D12123; Turner Bequest CLIV Y.
5
Wilton 1979, p.363 no.550.
6
Ibid., p.341 no.369.
7
For a list of exhibits, see Eric Shanes, ‘Identifying Turner’s Chamonix Water-Colours’, The Burlington Magazine, vol.142, no.1172, pp.693–4.
8
Wilton 1979, p.360 no.533
9
Hill, Warburton, Tussey 1980, pp.26–7.
10
Wilton 1979, p.360 no.530.
11
Ibid., p.362 no.541.
12
Ibid., p.360 no.532.
13
Hill, Warburton, Tussey 1980, p.29.
14
Wilton 1979, p.342 no.373; Sotheby’s sale, 4 July 2007, lot 12.
15
Ibid., p.343 no.382.
16
Ibid., p.343 no.381; Sotheby’s sale, 4 July 2007, lot 13.
17
Ibid., pp.362–3 no.547, as ‘Patterdale Old Church’.
18
Ibid., p.360 no.531.
19
Ibid., p.342 no.371.
20
Ibid., p.343 no.384.
21
Ibid., p.342 no.379.
22
Ibid., p.344 no.392.
23
Ibid., p.342 no.374.
24
Ibid., p.342 no.375.

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘List of Works for Walter Fawkes (Inscription by Turner) c.1810 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2007, 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-list-of-works-for-walter-fawkes-inscription-by-turner-r1130917, accessed 19 March 2024.