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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Scotland 1831 > Rokeby and Appleby Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner 'Low Wood', Windermere from Ambleside 1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘'Low Wood', Windermere from Ambleside’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 24 Verso:
‘Low Wood’, Windermere from Ambleside 1831
D25570
Turner Bequest CCLXIV 24a
Pencil on white wove paper, 74 x 94 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘[?]Low Wood’ bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s inscription, ‘Low Wood’, tells us that this is a view of Windermere from Ambleside. While ‘Low Wood’ does not feature on the Ordnance Survey map, there is a hotel by that name on this spot, and the topography of this very slight sketch fits the view from Ambleside. In the left foreground a sweeping bay is created by Holme Crag with the foot of Wansfell Pike above it, and across the foreshortened lake is High Wray. Turner seems to have compressed the composition horizontally to bring the banks of the lake closer together.
If this is correct and Turner did go to Ambleside, then it suggests that he may have reached it from Kendal on his way north to Keswick, rather than heading straight to Penrith and making this the basis of his explorations in the lakes as Gerald Finley has suggested.1

Thomas Ardill
September 2009

1
Gerald Finley, Landscapes of Memory: Turner as Illustrator to Scott, London 1980, p.91.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘‘Low Wood’, Windermere from Ambleside 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2009, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-low-wood-windermere-from-ambleside-r1133930, accessed 19 September 2024.