Mossdale Upper Falls, Wensleydale; Two Architectural Designs for ?Gate Lodges

1816

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Yorkshire 5 Sketchbook
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 173 x 260 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D11550
Turner Bequest CXLVIII 17

Catalogue entry

Apart from a few lines continuing, to the right, the sketch of Mossdale upper falls on folio 38 recto (D11549; Turner Bequest CXLVIII 16 now bound opposite), the main subjects here, inverted in relation to the sketch of Mossdale, are a plan and a perspective of the roof and front of a small building, possibly a gatehouse. At about this time Turner designed new gate lodges for Farnley Hall, the home of his Yorkshire patron Walter Fawkes.1 Drawings of the lodges occur in the Farnley sketchbook (Tate D12017–D12018, D12019–D12020; Turner Bequest CLIII 13a–14, 14a–15). John Gage associated the present designs with alterations to Turner’s Gallery at Harley Street and read the inscription as ‘Painting room’,2 but ‘Pantry’ is preferred here, and the building seems far too small to have any connection with Turner’s Harley Street house.

The sketch of Mossdale Falls is inverted in relation to the main sequence of subjects in the sketchbook. A fairly comprehensive reordering of this part of the book appears to be required. For further comment see notes to folio 33 verso (D11576; Turner Bequest CXLVIII 31a).

David Hill
May 2009

For Fawkes in general see James Hamilton, ‘Fawkes, Walter Ramsden (1769–1825)’, in Evelyn Joll, Martin Butlin and Luke Herrmann (eds.), The Oxford Companion to J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 2001, pp.103–4.

Gage 1969, p.162.

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