Joseph Mallord William Turner

Kirkstall Abbey

c.1824

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Brighton and Arundel Sketchbook
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 75 × 118 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D18394
Turner Bequest CCX 50 a

Catalogue entry

Rendered with agile line, here Turner depicts the valley of the River Aire and Kirkstall Abbey, a ruined Cistercian monastery established in 1152. This sketch is associated with Turner’s watercolour of Kirkstall Abbey produced for W.B. Cooke’s Rivers of England series (Tate D18146; Turner Bequest CCVIII M and Tate impressions T04810, T04811, T06371).1 See also Tate D18390; Turner Bequest CCX 48.

Alice Rylance-Watson
February 2015

For more information see Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Kirkstall Abbey, on the River Aire 1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, August 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-kirkstall-abbey-on-the-river-aire-r1146210.

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