Joseph Mallord William Turner

Landscape Composition with a Tower among Hills beside a Lake

c.1797–8

Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)

License this image

In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Watercolours and Drawings Related to the 1797 North of England Tour, and Other Subjects
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 422 × 547 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D40190

Catalogue entry

This is a summary pencil sketch, which Turner scholar David Hill has suggested may show Ellerton Priory on the River Swale a few miles west of Richmond. It seems to relate to the watercolour formerly known as ‘Norham Castle, on the Tweed’ in the Whitworth Art Gallery Manchester (D.20.1904).1

There is a watercolour study of Richmond, Yorkshire, on the recto (D01116; Turner Bequest XXXVI V). The present drawing was not recorded in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory.2

Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, pp.330–1 no.277, reproduced.

See A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.79.

Technical notes:

There is a purplish grey stain along the left and bottom left edges of the sheet.

Andrew Wilton
January 2013

Read full Catalogue entry

Explore

architecture(41,310)
- features(8,901)
- - tower(2,978)
- townscapes / man-made features(21,653)
- - building - non-specific(3,170)
nature(45,225)
- landscape(25,918)
- - mountain(6,224)
- water: inland(11,140)
- - lake(1,816)

In the shop

Browse the shop