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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Farnley Hall and Yorkshire c.1808-24 > Large Farnley Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Leathley Church from Above Lindley Mill, Looking Down the River Washburn c.1816

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Leathley Church from Above Lindley Mill, Looking Down the River Washburn’ c.1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 39 Recto:
Leathley Church from Above Lindley Mill, Looking Down the River Washburn c.1816
D09055
Turner Bequest CXXVIII 39
Pencil on white wove paper, 285 x 460 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Water gleaming through’, lower left
Stamped in black ‘CXXVIII 39’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This drawing looks south from above Lindley Mill, along the river Washburn to Leathley Church with Caley Park and the eastern parts of Otley Chevin in the distance. The sketch records a revisit by Turner to the site about a mile north-east of Walter Fawkes’s seat Farnley Hall, which he had sketched from nearby in 1808 (Tate D12120; Turner Bequest TB CLIV V). Turner returned to exactly the same viewpoint in a sketch in the Kirkstall Lock sketchbook (Tate D12259; Turner Bequest CLV 18). A sketch in The Aqueduct sketchbook (Tate D11980; Turner Bequest CLII 6) is possibly also from nearby.
The present sketch is closely related to a watercolour, The Valley of Washburn and Leathley Church (private collection)1 painted for Walter Fawkes about 1816–18, but this seems to have been based directly on the Kirkstall Lock sketch, rather than on the present one.
1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.372 no.627; Sotheby’s sale, London, 4 December 2008, lot 147.
Verso:
Blank, except for an inscription ‘Hazel bush off [...?] | 10 or [...?] of A Bank | Fox G structure [a diagram] For all [?]’

David Hill
October 2009

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Leathley Church from Above Lindley Mill, Looking Down the River Washburn c.1816 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 2009, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-leathley-church-from-above-lindley-mill-looking-down-the-r1146775, accessed 25 April 2024.