Joseph Mallord William Turner ?Whitby c.1827
Joseph Mallord William Turner,
?Whitby
c.1827
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
?Whitby c.1827
D25194
Turner Bequest CCLXIII 72
Turner Bequest CCLXIII 72
Watercolour on white wove paper, 308 x 492 mm
Inscribed in red ink ‘72’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXIII – 72’ bottom right
Inscribed in red ink ‘72’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXIII – 72’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Exhibition history
1953
Display of Watercolours from the Turner Bequest, Tate Gallery, London, January 1953–April 1959 (no catalogue but frame number II:27, as ‘Castle on hill, from River’).
1953
Le Paysage anglais de Gainsborough à Turner, Orangerie des Tuileries, Paris, February–April 1953 (72).
1956
Masters of British Painting 1800–1950, Museum of Modern Art, New York, October–December 1956, City Art Museum of St Louis, January–March 1957, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, March–May 1957 (110, reproduced, as ‘Castle on a Hill from a River’, c.1820–30).
1974
Turner 1775–1851, Royal Academy, London, November 1974–March 1975 (649, as ‘Norham Castle’, ?c.1835).
1980
Turner at the Bankside Gallery: Drawings & Water-colours of British River Scenes from the British Museum, Bankside Gallery, London, November–December 1980 (85, as ‘Norham Castle’, ?c.1835).
1997
Turner’s Watercolour Explorations 1810–1842, Tate Gallery, London, February–June 1997, Southampton City Art Gallery, June–September 1997 (51, reproduced in colour, as ‘?Whitby’, c.1827).
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.819, CCLXIII 72, as ‘Castle on hill, from river. (? Tamworth.)’. c.1820–30.
1974
Martin Butlin, Andrew Wilton and John Gage, Turner 1775–1851, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy, London 1974, p.174 no.649, as ‘Norham Castle’.
1984
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.302 under no.512.
1997
David Hill, ‘Turner’s “Colour Beginnings” in Britain’, Turner Society News, no.76, August 1997, p.7.
1997
Eric Shanes, Turner’s Watercolour Explorations 1810–1842, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1997, pp.68 no.51, reproduced in colour, as ‘?Whitby’. c.1827, p.95 Appendix I under ‘East Coast of England Series’, as ‘Study for Whitby?’. c.1827, p.96 under ‘England and Wales Series’, as ‘Sketch for a view of Whitby’. c.1827, p.103 under ‘Yorkshire’, as ‘Sketch for an England and Wales series drawing of Whitby. c.1828 (sic), p.104 Appendix II, as ‘Sketch or study: Whitby?’.
2006
Sam Smiles, The Turner Book, Essential Artists, London 2006, p.211 note 1:33.
Eric Shanes has suggested that this colour study represents the harbour at Whitby, North Yorkshire, as an undeveloped subject for Turner’s Picturesque Views in England and Wales.1 He has compared it with the watercolour Whitby of about 1827 (private collection),2 engraved (open etching only; no Tate impression) for the Picturesque Views on the East Coast of England, which shows St Mary’s Church and Whitby Abbey from an elevated viewpoint looking north-east, with a contre-jour dawn effect which would only be feasible from that angle in high summer; the same applies with the sun at the centre of the present composition, assuming the identification is correct. Shanes describes the present work as ‘possibly based on a synthesis’ of pencil sketches in the 1801 Helmsley sketchbook (Tate D02469–D02471; Turner Bequest LIII 6, 7, 8),3 dominated by the tower (now gone) of Whitby Abbey at the centre and the lower profile of St Mary’s to its left, looking north-east across the harbour from the waterline.
Finberg had suggested Tamworth as the subject, presumably thinking of the England and Wales composition Tamworth Castle, Staffordshire of about 1830 (private collection), 4 engraved in 1832 (Tate impression: T04598), but this study is sufficiently removed from it for a connection to be discounted; ‘colour beginnings’ which do appear to show Tamworth are Tate D25268 and D25306 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 146, 184).
The present work was exhibited in 19745 and 19806 as relating to one of Turner’s recurrent subjects, Norham Castle above the River Tweed in Northumberland (for a general discussion see under Tate D08158; Turner Bequest CXVIII D),7 culminating in the unfinished painting Norham Castle, Sunrise of about 1845 (Tate N01981),8 which has been linked to this study,9 but the general similarity appears fortuitous, while the dark forms and upright strokes below the sun and tower suggest shipping in a harbour, as in the Whitby sketches. However, David Hill has described Shanes’s Whitby identification as ‘positively wrong’,10 albeit without offering an alternative. For a likely Norham ‘colour beginning’ see Tate D40191 (verso of CCLXIII 22).
See also the introductions to the present subsection of identified but unrealised subjects and the overall England and Wales ‘colour beginnings’ grouping to which this work has been assigned.
This work is listed among those lent from the British Museum (where the Turner Bequest works on paper were then held), for display at the Tate Gallery between 1953 and 1959. It is not clear whether the works were shown continuously, but in this case loans to exhibitions in Paris and America fall within that period.
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.405 no.903; Eric Shanes, Turner’s England 1810–38, London 1990, p.157 no.129, reproduced in colour.
See Michael Spender in Spender and Malcolm Fry, Turner at the Bankside Gallery: Catalogue of an Exhibition of Drawings & Water-colours of British River Scenes from the British Museum, exhibition catalogue, Bankside Gallery, London 1980, p.180.
Technical notes:
The glare of the sun comprises bare paper, its white intensity emphasised by the surrounding yellow watercolour.
The glare of the sun comprises bare paper, its white intensity emphasised by the surrounding yellow watercolour.
Verso:
Blank, save for inscriptions: in pencil by ?Turner ‘19’ towards bottom right, upside down; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram above ‘CCLXIII – 72’ bottom left; and in pencil ‘CCLXIII. 72’ and ‘D25194’ bottom right.
Blank, save for inscriptions: in pencil by ?Turner ‘19’ towards bottom right, upside down; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram above ‘CCLXIII – 72’ bottom left; and in pencil ‘CCLXIII. 72’ and ‘D25194’ bottom right.
Matthew Imms
March 2013
How to cite
Matthew Imms, ‘?Whitby c.1827 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2013, https://www