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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > North of England 1797-1801 > Watercolours and Drawings Related to the ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Landscape Composition with a Tower among Hills beside a Lake c.1797-8

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Landscape Composition with a Tower among Hills beside a Lake’ c.1797-8
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Landscape Composition with a Tower among Hills beside a Lake c.1797–8
D40190
Pencil on white wove paper, 422 x 547 mm
Watermark ‘J WHATMAN 1794’
Stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram above ‘XXXVI V’ towards bottom left
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is a summary pencil sketch, which Turner scholar David Hill has suggested may show Ellerton Priory on the River Swale a few miles west of Richmond. It seems to relate to the watercolour formerly known as ‘Norham Castle, on the Tweed’ in the Whitworth Art Gallery Manchester (D.20.1904).1
There is a watercolour study of Richmond, Yorkshire, on the recto (D01116; Turner Bequest XXXVI V). The present drawing was not recorded in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory.2
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, pp.330–1 no.277, reproduced.
2
See A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.79.
Technical notes:
There is a purplish grey stain along the left and bottom left edges of the sheet.

Andrew Wilton
January 2013

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Landscape Composition with a Tower among Hills beside a Lake c.1797–8 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-landscape-composition-with-a-tower-among-hills-beside-a-lake-r1150262, accessed 20 September 2024.