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 Gordale Scar 1816

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Gordale Scar’ 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 162 Verso:
Gordale Scar 1816
D11322
Turner Bequest CXLV 161a
Pencil on white wove paper, 154 x 96 mm
Partial watermark ‘I & E | 1’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is the right half of a double-page spread, continued from folio 163 recto opposite (D11323; Turner Bequest CXLV 162). The two pages, inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, form the fifth of seven studies of Gordale Scar and its approaches including one in the Yorkshire 5 sketchbook (Tate D11574; Turner Bequest CXLVIII 30a), which also accompanied Turner on his tour of 1816. The present author has dated this sketch to Thursday 25 July,1 and compares it to a large coloured sketch (Tate D12113; Turner Bequest CLIV O).2 The point of visual intersection of the right side of the gorge with the left is similar, and argues a similar angle of view.
For general notes on Gordale, see under folio 170 recto (D11335; Turner Bequest CXLV 169).

David Hill
April 2009

1
See Hill 1984, pp.42–6.
2
See ibid., p.29.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Gordale Scar 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-gordale-scar-r1201909, accessed 16 June 2025.