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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Aysgarth: The Middle Falls 1816

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 136 Verso:
Aysgarth: The Middle Falls 1816
D11270
Turner Bequest CXLV 135a
Pencil on white wove paper, 96 x 154 mm
Partial watermark ‘Smith | 812’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The middle falls at Aysgarth are the first set of falls downstream of Aysgarth Bridge. Turner records them here with the page turned horizontally, from a close viewpoint on the right bank of the river Ure. The Yorkshire 4 sketchbook contains two studies of the falls from the same bank, but from more distant viewpoints (Tate D11462–D11463; Turner Bequest CXLVII 14, 15).
The present author has dated this sketch to Sunday 28 July 1816.1

David Hill
April 2009

1
See Hill 1984, pp.52–8.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Aysgarth: The Middle Falls 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-aysgarth-the-middle-falls-r1201857, accessed 07 June 2026.