Joseph Mallord William Turner

This view was taken a few metres upstream of that on folio 34 verso (D01967). Turner chose not to include Whalley Bridge in any of his finished subjects, though he returned to it on a subsequent visit to the neighbourhood in 1808, when he made a fresh drawing in his Tabley No.1 sketchbook (Tate D06837; Turner Bequest CIII 8), and later executed an oil painting, shown at the Royal Academy in 1811 under the title Whalley Bridge and Abbey, Lancashire: Dyers Washing and Drying cloth (private collection, on loan to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford);1 its first owner was Thomas Lister Parker (see the sketchbook’s introduction). The subject of the oil, in fact, barely affords a glimpse of the Abbey buildings between the arches of the bridge; here, they are fully visible, even if the site is foreshortened in this perspective. See also folios 44 recto and 45 recto (D01983, D01984; Turner Bequest XLV 43, 44).