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 View from the Crook of Lune, Looking North 1816

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A View from the Crook of Lune, Looking North’ 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 72 Recto:
A View from the Crook of Lune, Looking North 1816
D11147
Turner Bequest CXLV 72
Pencil on white wove paper, 154 x 96 mm
Partial watermark ‘Smith | 812’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Corn’
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in blue ink ‘72’ top right
Stamped in black with Turner Bequest number ‘CXLV 72’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This small sketch records the view north-east up the river Lune from the Lancaster to Kirkby Lonsdale road. It probably represents Turner’s first impression on his arrival at the Crook of Lune from Lancaster, and the beginning of an intensive study of the subject continued through several pages in the present sketchbook to folio 69 recto (D11141), and also in the Yorkshire 4 sketchbook (Tate D11499; Turner Bequest CXLVII 35a). The latter records the same material as here, but from a more distant viewpoint. This sketch is upside-down in relation to the main sequence (see the sketchbook’s Introduction).
The Crook of Lune is an exaggerated loop in the river Lune near Caton about six kilometres north-east of Lancaster. It was a popular viewpoint since a description of it by the poet Thomas Gray was included in most contemporary guidebooks to the area.1 The present author has dated Turner’s sketches there to Thursday 8 August 1816.2

David Hill
April 2009

1
See, for example, Thomas West, A Guide to the Lakes, 3rd ed., London 1784, pp.24–5
2
See Hill 1984, pp.87–90.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘A View from the Crook of Lune, Looking North 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-view-from-the-crook-of-lune-looking-north-r1201733, accessed 01 April 2026.