J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Tour of Yorkshire 1816 > Yorkshire 2 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Panorama of the Ribble Valley from below Great Mitton 1816

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Panorama of the Ribble Valley from below Great Mitton’ 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 180 Recto:
A Panorama of the Ribble Valley from below Great Mitton 1816
D11355
Turner Bequest CXLV 179
Pencil on white wove paper, 96 x 154 mm
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in blue ink ‘179’ top left and ‘5’ top right, both ascending vertically
Stamped in black with Turner Bequest number ‘CXLV 179’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Drawn with the page turned horizontally, this is the left part of a two-page panorama continued on folio 179 verso opposite (D11354; Turner Bequest CXLV 178a). It was taken from a viewpoint on the right bank of the Ribble, just below the bridge at Great Mitton, looking north to Clitheroe Castle and Pendle Hill with, in the foreground from left to right, Great Mitton Church and Bridge, the River Ribble, a detail of the church, and Mitton Hall.
The present author has dated the sketch to Friday 19 July 1816,1 when Turner was staying with the family of his patron Thomas Lister-Parker at Browsholme Hall, about seven kilometres to the north-west and also discusses the possibility that Turner might have used a telescope to pick out the detail of Mitton church.2 Turner first visited Great Mitton in 1799, when he sketched the interior of its church in the Lancashire and North Wales sketchbook (Tate D01912; Turner Bequest XLV 1).

David Hill
April 2009

1
See Hill 1984, pp.38–9.
2
See ibid., p.50.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘A Panorama of the Ribble Valley from below Great Mitton 1816 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2009, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2023, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-panorama-of-the-ribble-valley-from-below-great-mitton-r1201942, accessed 02 August 2025.