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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

After Joseph Mallord William Turner, after Joseph Mallord William Turner York from the South-West 1797-8

after Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
York from the South-West 1797–8
D01097
Turner Bequest XXXVI C
Blue and grey washes on white laid paper, 64 x 94 mm
Watermark: Britannia in an oval
Stamped in black ‘XXXVI – C’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Apparently based on Tate D01096 (Turner Bequest XXXVI B), this wash drawing in the ‘Monro School’ idiom (see the relevant section of the present catalogue, c.1794–8) has been thought by Turner scholar David Hill to be a pupil’s drawing.1 This is possible: the work is fairly summary; but there is nothing intrinsically implausible about an attribution to Turner himself, and the presence of a ruled border round the image in D01096 suggests that it was envisaged as a subject for engraving, perhaps in one of John Walker’s pocket books (see Introduction to the Matlock sketchbook, Tate; Turner Bequest XIX) in the ‘Midlands 1794–1802’ section of this catalogue. A watercolour evidently derived from the present work, in the manner of Thomas Girtin (1775–1802) and perhaps a copy after Girtin by John Henderson, Jnr (1797–1878), is in the British Museum, London (Henderson Bequest, 1878,1228.23).

Andrew Wilton
January 2013

1
See Hill 1996, pp.146–7.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘York from the South-West 1797–8 by after 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/after-joseph-mallord-william-turner-york-from-the-south-west-r1150277, accessed 28 March 2024.