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 North 1816

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Semer Water from the North’ 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 147 Verso:
Semer Water from the North 1816
D11292
Turner Bequest CXLV 146a
Pencil on white wove paper, 96 x 154 mm
Partial watermark ‘I & E | 1’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Sim’ left of centre
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Recording the view of Semer Water as seen from the Countersett to Wensleydale road, this sketch, drawn with the page turned horizontally, preserves the first impression of a view that Turner sketched in greater detail, and from a slightly more distant viewpoint in the Yorkshire 4 book (Tate D11447–D11448; Turner Bequest CXLVII 3a–4), which also accompanied him on his tour of 1816. The Stake Pass road over which Turner had travelled from Wharfedale can be seen in the distance to the left. The present author has dated Turner’s sketches of Semer Water to Friday 26 July 1816.1

David Hill
April 2009

1
See Hill 1984, pp.46–50.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Semer Water from the North 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-north-r1201879, accessed 09 July 2025.