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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Tour of Yorkshire 1816 > Yorkshire 4 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Barnard Castle from Towler Hill 1816

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Barnard Castle from Towler Hill’ 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 33 Recto:
Barnard Castle from Towler Hill 1816
D11494
Turner Bequest CXLVII 33
Pencil on white wove paper, 125 x 206 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘B C Tollar Hill’ bottom right
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in blue ink ‘279’ bottom right and ‘32’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CXLVII 32’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch is taken from Towler Hill, a high bluff over the River Tees about a mile north-north-west of Barnard Castle, looking downstream to the castle and town. Towler Hill was a popular viewpoint. Almost exactly the same view was painted in 1805 by John Sell Cotman in a well-known watercolour (Leeds Museums and Galleries)1 while Walter Scott celebrated the prospect in his poem Rokeby published in 1813. Presumably Turner had the poem in mind as he sketched in 1816.
For Barnard Castle in this sketchbook see folio 32 recto (D11493).

David Hill
February 2009

1
David Hill, Cotman in the North, 2005, p.129 reproduced.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Barnard Castle from Towler Hill 1816 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2009, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-barnard-castle-from-towler-hill-r1143629, accessed 25 April 2024.