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

As recognised by Finberg in his sequencing,1 Tate D17768–D17772 (Turner Bequest CCIII K, L, M, N, O) form a group of similar wooded river valley subjects in pencil and wash. The present work is the only one firmly identified by Ian Warrell as a view on the River Washburn, between Folly Hall and the ruined Dob Park Lodge,2 but he has plausibly suggested that they all probably represent the river,3 not far up the valley north-west of Walter Fawkes’s home at Farnley Hall (see David Hill’s introduction to this section).

Warrell mentions these five sheets in passing in relation to the disbound ‘Munro’ or ‘Farnley-Munro’ sketchbook, in use on Turner’s last visit to Farnley in the late autumn of 1824, the year before Fawkes, his great friend and patron, died.4 He has suggested that the artist may have been encouraged in the creation of tonal, inky drawings here and in that slightly larger sketchbook5 by a knowledge of his former patron Richard Payne Knight’s6 album of wash studies by the French artist Claude Lorrain (c.1604–82), who was in any case an important influence.7 Knight acquired the album not long before his death in 1824, and left its contents to the British Museum, London.8 Both the Liber Studiorum and the so-called ‘Little Liber’ (see the relevant section of the present catalogue, c.1806–24 and c.1823–6) owe a debt to Claude – the former in its general concept, style and certain compositions, and the latter perhaps in its emphasis on chiaroscuro.9

Although any specific influence of the Payne Knight album on the present works will probably remain a matter for speculation, Warrell observes that during the 1824 Farnley visit Turner ‘worked predominantly in monochrome washes that resemble some of Claude’s broader effects’ the present work being among a group ‘clearly sketched fluently on the spot ... almost as if Turner was assimilating the meaning of Claude’s “bits” of nature to be found among the Payne Knight collection and putting into practice what they revealed.’10

There are pencil views on the Washburn possibly from as early as 1808 (Tate D12120, D12121; Turner Bequest CLIV V, W), and numerous later views include a finished watercolour showing Dob Park Lodge, On the Washburn, under Folly Hall (British Museum, London),11 based on a partly coloured drawing of about 1816 in the Large Farnley sketchbook (Tate D09057; Turner Bequest CXXVIII 41).

When the present drawing was exhibited in 1878, John Ruskin described it as ‘Junction of Greta and Tees, Mortham Tower’,12 apparently linking it to the watercolour Junction of the Greta and the Tees (currently untraced),13 engraved in 1834 for Walter Scott’s Poetical Works (Tate impression: T04955), to which it bears no more than a fortuitous general resemblance in its juxtaposition of tower, trees and river.14

Technical notes:

There is an adventitious brown splash to the right of the centre.

Verso:

Blank; inscribed by ?John Ruskin in ink ‘232’ (circled) bottom right; inscribed in blue pencil ‘234’ at centre.