Joseph Mallord William Turner

Finberg noted that this sketch is the basis for the gouache painting Gateway to the Flower Garden at Farnley of about 1815 or a little later (private collection),1 made for Turner’s friend and patron Walter Fawkes, of Farnley Hall, North Yorkshire (see the sketchbook’s Introduction).2 The elaborate gateway had been removed from Menston Hall, a few miles south-east of Farnley, in 1814. It has since been moved again and incorporated into the porch on the east front of the old part of Farnley Hall.3 There is a detail showing the profile of mouldings at the top right, apparently corresponding with the upper part of the gateway. The gateway is also shown in the background of the 1815 watercolour frontispiece of historical items from Fawkes’s collection, At Farnley Hall (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford).4

There is a slighter drawing from the same viewpoint on folio 6 verso (D09677), apparently made to show the full height of the trees in the background, which are somewhat cramped here by comparison.

An etching of the composition was published along with two other Farnley subjects in 1816 in Dr Whitaker’s antiquarian study of the Leeds area, Loidis and Elmete; see the overall Introduction to the present grouping.

Technical notes:

There is a small brown stain at the top right, showing through from the recto (Tate D09674; Turner Bequest CXXXIII 5).