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

This sketch records the view of the Wenning Valley towards Tatham and Ingleborough from the terrace of Hornby Castle. The sketch subsequently formed the basis of a studio watercolour Ingleborough from Hornby Castle Terrace (private collection)1 engraved in Thomas Dunham Whitaker’s History of Richmondshire and published in 1822.

Hornby Castle dates back to at least the thirteenth century when the Neville family occupied it, but the only surviving medieval work is the fourteenth-century base of the keep. The house was extensively enlarged and remodelled in the eighteenth century and again in the nineteenth, and is now a private residence. Turner sketched the terrace and much the same distant view in a two- page panorama and the Yorkshire 2 sketchbook (Tate D11131–D11132; Turner Bequest CXLV 62a–63). This must have supplied the detail of Ingleborough for the finished watercolour, since the detail in the present sketch is effaced, presumably because the summit was covered in cloud. The same sketchbook contains sketches from closer viewpoints (Tate D11133, D11134; Turner Bequest CXLV 63a, 64). Turner’s viewpoints of Hornby Castle in the village are accessible, but that from the terrace is private, except for occasional public openings. The present writer has dated Turner’s sketches at Hornby to Friday 9 August 1816.