Joseph Mallord William Turner

Farnley Hall from the Avenue

?1814

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment
Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Devon Rivers, No.2 Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 110 x 178 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D09776
Turner Bequest CXXXIII 77 a

Catalogue entry

As has been recognised,1 this view, with the southern end of the west side of Farnley Hall seen in the distance through trees, is the basis of a watercolour of The Avenue, Farnley (Bolton Museums),2 which has been variously dated to about 18153 or 1818.4 More recently the sketch itself has been dated to ‘1816 or earlier’,5 and evidence has been presented to suggest that a gentlemen’s agreement commissioning the series of Farnley views with which The Avenue has been associated occurred in 1816.6
There is a similar, rougher, view on folio 78 recto opposite (D09777), showing only the trees on each side, which can almost be read as a continuation upwards from the present sketch, and the forms of the boughs and branches shown there appear to have informed the watercolour to an extent. See the Introduction to the sketchbook for other Farnley and nearby Yorkshire views in this book.

Matthew Imms
July 2014

1
See Hill and others 1980, p.42.
2
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.369 no.600, pl.129.
3
Hill and others 1980, p.42, as ‘c.1815?’.
4
Wilton 1979, p.369.
5
Karen Lynch and David Hill, ‘Turner runs Riot: A Newly Discovered Reminiscence of Turner’, Turner Society News, no.96, March 2004, p.12 note 20.
6
See ibid., p.12 and note 19.

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