Unlike the composition on the other side of the sheet, a likely view of Norham Castle (Tate
D40191), the present colour study has attracted little attention. Its loosely worked masses suggest a wooded river valley with a hill set against a sunset or sunrise beyond. Eric Shanes has suggested that it is a later variation on the watercolour
Wycliffe, near Rokeby of about 1820 (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool),
1 engraved in 1823 for Whitaker’s
History of Richmondshire (Tate impressions:
T04455,
T04456,
T04457,
T06042),
2 and based on an 1816 pencil drawing in the
Yorkshire 4 sketchbook (Tate
D11482; Turner Bequest CXLVII 26). That composition shows Wycliffe Hall, County Durham, set on a distant hillside to the east with morning light streaming over the surrounding woods from behind it.
The present, rather generic composition varies significantly from the
Richmondshire watercolour in the juxtaposition of its various elements, and the slight resemblance may be fortuitous, but Shanes’s Wycliffe suggestion is tentatively retained in the absence of any other. He dates the other side (
D40191) to about 1830, from the starting point of an 1828 watermark which he records, although this is not readily evident in the sheet (see the technical notes below). Nevertheless, the loose yet confident execution appears consistent with other
England and Wales colour studies datable on various grounds to the late 1820s or early 1830s, and Shanes’s date has been adopted here.
See also the introductions to the present subsection of identified but unrealised subjects and the overall England and Wales ‘colour beginnings’ grouping to which this work has been assigned.
