Joseph Mallord William Turner

?Whalley Bridge, from the West

1799

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Dolbadarn Sketchbook
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 79 × 130 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D02004
Turner Bequest XLVI 9

Catalogue entry

Drawn with the page turned horizontally, this three-arched bridge is similar in design to the bridge over the River Calder at Whalley, where Turner made drawings of the Abbey ruins on the adjacent pages. Compare the drawing of Whalley Bridge seen from the east in the contemporary Lancashire and North Wales sketchbook (Tate D01969; Turner Bequest XLV 35a), which includes a building on the river bank opposite the Abbey ruins that is possibly identical to that shown here; see also Tate D01961 (Turner Bequest XLV 31a).

Alternatively, the subject may be Edisford Bridge outside Clitheroe, north of Whalley, where Turner made a drawing in the same book (Tate D01959; Turner Bequest XLV 30a). He made a finished watercolour showing Edisford Bridge for Thomas Dunham Whitaker (Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto).1

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

Duplicated in Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.327 no.248, reproduced, as ‘Richmond Bridge, Yorks’, c.1798, as at Toronto, and p.332 no.290, as the Clitheroe subject, untraced.

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