Joseph Mallord William Turner

The subject is drawn with the page turned horizontally. Another view of the castle and bridge, taken from the opposite direction looking upstream, is on folio 31 recto (D00936; Turner Bequest XXXIV 30). Turner made a watercolour of Barnard Castle as one of the series for the Picturesque Beauties of England and Wales in about 1825 (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven);1 it is partly derived from this drawing. As David Hill notes, the chapel in the centre of the bridge had been demolished by the time he returned to Barnard Castle to draw it again in 1816 and 1817, but when he made the England and Wales watercolour he relied on this earlier record and retained the chapel. These studies occur in the Yorkshire 2 sketchbook (Tate D11207, D11208; Turner Bequest CXLV 103, 103a). He returned to Barnard Castle in 1831 on his way to Scotland to work on illustrations to Sir Walter Scott; there are studies of the place in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border sketchbook (Tate D25823–D25827; Turner Bequest CCLXVI 32–34).

Verso:

Blank; stamped in brown ink with Turner Bequest monogram.