Joseph Mallord William Turner

This distant view of High Force is taken from the right bank of the River Tees. It formed the basis of a studio watercolour of Fall of the Tees, Yorkshire (Indianapolis Museum of Art),1 which was presumably planned to illustrate Thomas Dunham Whitaker’s proposed seven-volume General History of the County of York (see sketchbook introduction). In the event, however, the watercolour was not painted until about 1825 and was engraved by Edward Goodall in 1827 for Turner’s series of Picturesque View in England and Wales. The present writer has dated Turner’s sketches at High Force to Saturday 3 August 1816.