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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > East Anglia, Sussex and Yorkshire 1824 > Brighton and Arundel Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Kirkstall Abbey from Kirkstall Hill c.1824

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Kirkstall Abbey from Kirkstall Hill’ c.1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 58 Verso:
Kirkstall Abbey from Kirkstall Hill c.1824
D18398
Turner Bequest CCX 52a
Pencil on white wove paper, 75 x 118 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Here Turner has drawn a prospect of Kirkstall Abbey, a ruined Cistercian monastery in West Yorkshire, from a south-easterly vantage point atop Kirkstall Hill. Turner and his close friend and contemporary Thomas Girtin (1775–1802) had previously pictured the Abbey from the same viewpoint in 1797 and 1800 respectively (see Tate D00921; Turner Bequest XXXIV 15 and The British Museum).1 The town of Kirkstall is rendered in the foreground at left and the River Aire can be seen meandering through the picturesque valley at centre. There is a separate and slight view of the valley above the main sketch.
These sketches are associated with Turner’s watercolour of Kirkstall Abbey produced for W.B. Cooke’s Rivers of England series (Tate D18146; Turner Bequest CCVIII M and Tate impressions T04810, T04811, T06371).2 See also Tate D18390; Turner Bequest CCX 48.

Alice Rylance-Watson
February 2015

1
Thomas Girtin, Kirkstall Abbey, Yorkshire, 1800, watercolour on paper, British Museum, London; see: http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/pd/t/thomas_girtin,_kirkstall_abbey.aspx
2
For more information see Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Kirkstall Abbey, on the River Aire 1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, August 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-kirkstall-abbey-on-the-river-aire-r1146210.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Kirkstall Abbey from Kirkstall Hill c.1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-kirkstall-abbey-from-kirkstall-hill-r1181285, accessed 27 April 2024.