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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Scotland 1801-10 > Helmsley Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Norham: The Castle Seen above a Bend of the Tweed 1801

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Norham: The Castle Seen above a Bend of the Tweed’ 1801
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 44 Verso:
Norham: The Castle Seen above a Bend of the Tweed 1801
D02538
Turner Bequest LIII 44a
Pencil on white wove paper, 162 x 112 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is one of the most rapid of the sequence of views of Norham in this book (see under folio 42 verso; D02534), probably because Turner had made a larger, but scarcely more detailed, drawing from roughly the same spot when he was there in 1797; see the North of England sketchbook (Tate D00966; Turner Bequest XXXIV 57). That sketch was the source of two large and highly finished watercolours (private collection, and The Higgins Bedford),1 and for a succession of later works including the Liber Studiorum published in 1816 (see under Tate D08158; Turner Bequest CXVIII D, on which the famous late, unfinished oil painting Norham Castle, Sunrise (Tate N01981)2 was based. Turner may also have referred to the present study, which is continued on folio 45 recto opposite (D02539), when he worked on these later designs.

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.324 no.225, pp.324–5 no.226.
2
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.301–2 no.512, pl.514 (colour).

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Norham: The Castle Seen above a Bend of the Tweed 1801 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-norham-the-castle-seen-above-a-bend-of-the-tweed-r1178560, accessed 24 April 2024.