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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > West Country and Yorkshire 1814-17 > Devonshire Rivers, No.3, and Wharfedale ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Leeds from the South 1816

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Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 82 Recto:
Leeds from the South 1816
D09841
Turner Bequest CXXXIV 45a
Pencil on white wove paper with gilt edges, 179 x 254 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg recognised this as a ‘Distant view of Leeds’.1 David Hill has noted that this sketch was made while ‘casting around on the rising slopes between Hunslet and Holbeck’, respectively north-east and north-west of Beeston and since much developed, and nearer to the centre of Leeds, before finding his ‘viewpoint on the shoulder of Beeston Hill’2 to make a detailed, two-page sketch looking north on folios 48 verso–49 recto (D09883–D09884; Turner Bequest CXXXIV 79, 80; see also the continuation on folio 47 verso; D09832; Turner Bequest CXXXIV 38).
The double-page drawing was the direct source of the panoramic background of the 1816 watercolour Leeds (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven),3 as discussed in detail under D09883. Compare also the slight sketches on folios 47 recto and 81 verso opposite (D09833, D09831; Turner Bequest CXXXIV 38a, 37a). As with D09831, details in the foreground here may have suggested ideas for the figures and animals which appear in the foreground of the finished design. There may be a figure and dog towards the right here, and possibly a covered cart down the road; a dog is shown on the open ground beside the road on the left of the watercolour, with a cart in the distance on the right beyond various prominent figures.
1
Finberg 1909, I, p.382; see also Butlin, Wilton and Gage 1974, p.82, White 1977, p.77, Hawes 1982, p.200, Hawcroft 1983, p.[72], Daniels 1986, p.10, and Chumbley and Warrell 1989, p.46.
2
Hill 2008, p.103.
3
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.362 no.544, reproduced.
Technical notes:
Although this page’s Turner Bequest number has an ‘a’ suffix, conventionally indicating the verso of a leaf, it is now bound as the recto; as discussed in the sketchbook’s Introduction, the page sequence has been much disrupted.

Matthew Imms
July 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Leeds from the South 1816 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-leeds-from-the-south-r1147444, accessed 04 May 2025.