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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > North Wales 1799-1801 > Dolbadarn Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?Whalley Bridge, from the West 1799

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Whalley Bridge, from the West’ 1799
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 9 Recto:
?Whalley Bridge, from the West 1799
D02004
Turner Bequest XLVI 9
Pencil on white wove paper, 79 x 130 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘9’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘XLVI – 9’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Drawn with the page turned horizontally, this three-arched bridge is similar in design to the bridge over the River Calder at Whalley, where Turner made drawings of the Abbey ruins on the adjacent pages. Compare the drawing of Whalley Bridge seen from the east in the contemporary Lancashire and North Wales sketchbook (Tate D01969; Turner Bequest XLV 35a), which includes a building on the river bank opposite the Abbey ruins that is possibly identical to that shown here; see also Tate D01961 (Turner Bequest XLV 31a).
Alternatively, the subject may be Edisford Bridge outside Clitheroe, north of Whalley, where Turner made a drawing in the same book (Tate D01959; Turner Bequest XLV 30a). He made a finished watercolour showing Edisford Bridge for Thomas Dunham Whitaker (Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto).1

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

1
Duplicated in Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.327 no.248, reproduced, as ‘Richmond Bridge, Yorks’, c.1798, as at Toronto, and p.332 no.290, as the Clitheroe subject, untraced.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘?Whalley Bridge, from the West 1799 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-whalley-bridge-from-the-west-r1179863, accessed 18 April 2024.