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 1 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Masham Bridge, Church and Town 1816

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Masham Bridge, Church and Town’ 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 27 Recto:
Masham Bridge, Church and Town 1816
D10918
Turner Bequest CXLIV 27
Pencil on white wove paper, 154 x 97 mm
Very faint trace of an inscription in red ink, possibly by John Ruskin, top right, and another ‘27’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXLIV 27’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is the right half of a double-page spread, continued from folio 26 verso (D10917), opposite, recording the view from above the left bank of the River Ure, north of Masham Bridge, looking almost due south to the town and Church of Masham. The sketch includes a detail of the town above right, clarifying the buildings at the centre of the main composition where the road from Ripon to Middleham climbs up into the town.
This sketch is out of sequence in relation to Turner’s itinerary. The sketches of York end raggedly across several pages of the sketchbook, with numerous blanks in between. Turner’s itinerary took him from York to Boroughbridge, Ripon and thence to Masham, where he presumably went back to his blank pages to use up the gaps.
The Yorkshire 3 sketchbook, used on the same tour of 1816, has a similar view from a lower standpoint (Tate D11397; Turner Bequest CXLVI 18).
Verso:
Blank

David Hill
January 2009

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Masham Bridge, Church and Town 1816 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2009, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-masham-bridge-church-and-town-r1144105, accessed 05 April 2026.