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

In this sketch Turner records the view up Langdon Beck, with Hareden to the left and the road from Dunsop Bridge to the Trough of Bowland (about one and a half miles distant) to the right. The site is a short excursion (under eight miles by road) from Browsholme Hall, the seat of Thomas Lister Parker, where Turner was based for the first week of his tour of 1816. The present writer has suggested that the sketch was made on Monday 22 July 1816 when Turner joined a fishing party to the Trough of Bowland organised for her daughters by Mrs Fawkes, the wife of his patron Walter Fawkes of Farnley Hall, with whom Turner had travelled to Browsholme. A cart can be seen in the centre distance right, possibly the Fawkes’s transport. The Yorkshire 2 sketchbook contains a number of sketches in the vicinity made on the same excursion, including Tate D11341; Turner Bequest CXLV 172, which records a similar view. The present sketch is continued to the right with a few pencil lines on folio 42 recto (D11561; Turner Bequest CXLVIII 23, now bound opposite).