Joseph Mallord William Turner Gordale Scar c.1808
Joseph Mallord William Turner,
Gordale Scar
c.1808
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Gordale Scar c.1808
D12113
Turner Bequest CLIV O
Turner Bequest CLIV O
Oil and pencil on heavyweight wove paper, 549 x 767 mm (irregular) on a backing sheet of similar paper, 560 x 773 mm
Inscribed in red ink ‘Farnley O’ in the margin of the backing, bottom right
Stamped in brown ‘CLIV O’ bottom right
Inscribed in red ink ‘Farnley O’ in the margin of the backing, bottom right
Stamped in brown ‘CLIV O’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Exhibition history
1908
National Gallery, London, Temporary exhibition of Turner drawings and watercolours, December 1908 (no number).
1980
Turner in Yorkshire, York City Art Gallery, June–July 1980 (21 reproduced as ‘Gordale Scar, c.1808–1816?’).
1980
Turner and the Sublime, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, November 1980–January 1981, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, February–April, British Museum, London, May–September (30, reproduced).
1984
Turner’s Tour of Richmondshire/Yorkshire: In Turner’s Footsteps through the Hills and Dales of Northern England, Tate Gallery, London, July–December 1984 (no catalogue).
1990
The Third Decade: Turner Watercolours 1810–1820, Tate Gallery, London, January–April 1990 (25, reproduced).
2005
Turner’s Picture of Britain, Clore Gallery, Tate Britain, London, June 2005–April 2006 (no catalogue).
2007
Hockney on Turner Watercolours, Tate Britain, London, June 2007–February 2008 (no number).
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.437, CLIV O.
1910
Charles Lewis Hind, Turner’s Golden Visions, London and Edinburgh 1910 and 1925, p.266 (listing drawings exhibited at the National Gallery, 1908).
1980
David Hill, Stanley Warburton, Mary Tussey and others, Turner in Yorkshire, exhibition catalogue, York City Art Gallery 1980, p.27 (no.21 reproduced, as ‘Gordale Scar).
1980
Andrew Wilton, Turner and the Sublime, exhibition catalogue, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto 1980, pp.123–4 no.30 reproduced, 179, no.104.
1980
Evelyn Joll, ‘Review of Turner in Yorkshire exhibition’ in Turner Studies, I, part 1, 1980, p.38.
1980
Adele M. Holcomb, ‘Review of Turner and the Sublime exhibition’ in Turner Studies, III, part 1, 1980,p.52.
1984
David Hill, In Turner’s Footsteps: Through the Hills and Dales of Northern England, London 1984, p.41 reproduced.
1990
Diane Perkins, The Third Decade: Turner Watercolours 1810–1820, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1990, no.25 reproduced.
2001
Andrew Kennedy, ‘Yorkshire’, in Evelyn Joll, Martin Butlin and Luke Herrmann (eds.), The Oxford Companion to J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 2001, p.391.
2007
David Blayney Brown, Turner Watercolours, exhibition catalogue, Tate Britain, London 2007, pp.27 detail reproduced, 53.
2007
Simon Grant (ed.) and David Blayney Brown, Hockney on Turner Watercolours, exhibition catalogue, Tate Britain, London 2007, p.27.
This study depicts Gordale Scar, near Malham in the Craven Dales area of Yorkshire. This 100-metre deep limestone chasm was first popularised by Thomas Gray whose account of his visit in 1769 became the basis of response for visitors for at least the next forty years:
The rock on the left rises perpendicular with stubbed yew trees and shrubs, starting from its side to the height of at least 300 feet; but those are not the things: it is that to the right under which you stand to see the fall, the forms the principal horror of the place. From its very base it begins to slope forwards over you in one black and solid mass without any crevice in its surface and overshadows half the area below with its dreadful canopy... I stayed here (not without shuddering) a quarter of an hour, and thought my trouble richly paid, for the impression will last for life.1
It can be no coincidence that Turner situated himself exactly under Gray’s overhang to make this study.
This is one of the largest sketches in the Turner Bequest. From the vigour of its handling and the spatters and accidental marks, and from the very precise and specific correspondence to the site as seen from under Gray’s overhang, it looks very much as if it has been painted direct from nature. If so, it would be one of the most ambitious plein air sketches on paper that Turner ever made. However, although uniquely coloured, seemingly with the addition of oil, it sits with a group of ten unusually large pencil sketches of Wharfedale and Washburn Valley subjects, D12110, D12111, D11212, D12115, D12116, D12117, D12118, D12119, D12120 and D12121 (Turner Bequest CLIV L, M, N, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W). These can be dated to 1808 or thereabouts and that would conform to the stylistic date of the present study. Its colour range is also quite comparable to that of a series of large oil sketches of Thames subjects in the Turner Bequest that Turner made in the immediately preceding years.2 However, the present writer and other scholars have considered and alternative dating of 1816, when Turner visited the site in the company of the Fawkes family.3 On the latter occasion he made six sketches in the Yorkshire 2 sketchbook (beginning with Tate D11335; Turner Bequest CXLV 169) and another in the Yorkshire 5 sketchbook (Tate D11574; Turner Bequest CXLVII 30a). Although these explore the same material, none adopts exactly the same viewpoint.
Quoted from the version of Gray’s 1769 tour to the Lakes and parts of the north of England given in Thomas West, A Guide to the Lakes, (1778) 3rd edition, London 1784, p.218.
Technical notes:
The backing sheet appears to have been applied after the work entered the Turner Bequest. The top sheet seems to have been rolled after completion and then subsequently flattened and affixed to a supporting sheet. The edges are grubby and abraded, and there are numerous small tears and damages to the original sheet.
David Hill
July 2009
How to cite
David Hill, ‘Gordale Scar c.1808 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2009, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www