This sketch shows a figure, possibly a guide, standing beneath the entrance arch a little way into the cave looking down the first major boulder slope towards the depths. The present entrance is much more constricted than it appears here.
Dow Cave is about a mile north of Kettlewell in Upper Wharfedale, towards the beginning of Turner’s itinerary on this tour, and this must have been the first sketch he made in this book. The cave is now one of the most popular potholes in Britain, being one end of the famous Dowbergill passage, a rift running under Great Whernside to Providence Pot. It was already something of an attraction in 1816 and had been mentioned (as ‘Dove Cave’, the name used by Turner) by Thomas Dunham Whitaker in his
History of Craven first published in 1805; Turner was presumably now exploring the possibilities of an illustration for a new edition as part of Whitaker’s proposed seven-volume
General History of the County of York. Sketches in the
Yorkshire 2 sketchbook (Tate
D11315–D11309; Turner Bequest CXLV 158–155) record a foray into the depths of the cave, and another in the present book (
D11444) examines the valley at its mouth.
The present writer has previously suggested a possible relationship between Turner’s 1816 sketches of Dow Cave and the watercolour
A Rocky Pool, with a Heron and Kingfisher (Leeds Museums and Art Galleries).
1 There is no close connection, however, and the watercolour is based on an earlier sketch in the
Scottish Pencils series of 1801 (Tate
D03431; Turner Bequest LVIII 52), which would argue for a Scottish subject.
