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 Semer Water from the East 1816

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Semer Water from the East’ 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 148 Verso:
Semer Water from the East 1816
D11294
Turner Bequest CXLV 147a
Pencil on white wove paper, 96 x 154 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Drawn with the page turned horizontally, this was probably Turner’s first impression of Semer Water, on arriving over the Stake Pass from upper Wharfedale, taken from near High Blean, looking west over the head of Semer Water. Michael Rudd has identified the cottage with its dilapidated roof as Thwaite End House and notes two farms on Marsett Lane at the other side of the lake.1 The present author has dated Turner’s sketches at Semer Water to Friday 26 July 1816.2

David Hill
April 2009

1
See Rudd in House, Rudd and Clark 2006, p.27.
2
See Hill 1984, pp.46–50.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Semer Water from the East 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-semer-water-from-the-east-r1201881, accessed 25 August 2025.