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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Scotland 1831 > Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Junction of the Greta and Tees 1831

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Junction of the Greta and Tees’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 36 Recto:
Junction of the Greta and Tees 1831
D25831
Turner Bequest CCLXVI 36
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 187 mm
Inscribed in blue ink by John Ruskin ‘36’ top right and ‘342’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXVI 36’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Continuing from folio 35 verso (D25830) is the view of the rivers Greta and Tees with Mortham Tower that Turner used as the foundation of his frontispiece design for volume 9 of Sir Walter Scott’s Poetical Works: Junction of the Greta and the Tees circa 1832 (watercolour, whereabouts unknown).1 The present page shows the view west along the length of the Tees, from a point on the north bank opposite the junction with the Greta.
At the outer edge of the page, drawn with the sketchbook turned to the left, is the sketch that formed the basis of Turner’s rendering of Mortham Tower in the Scott illustration. The view was made from the same position as the main sketch to the north.

Thomas Ardill
September 2009

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.429 no.1086.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Junction of the Greta and Tees 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2009, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-junction-of-the-greta-and-tees-r1134198, accessed 19 April 2024.