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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?The River Calder near Whalley Bridge, with a Man Fishing and a Washerwoman 1808

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 4 Recto:
?The River Calder near Whalley Bridge, with a Man Fishing and a Washerwoman 1808
D06854
Turner Bequest CIII 24
Pencil on off-white wove paper, 226 x 295 mm
Stamped in black ‘CIII 24’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
In this drawing Finberg’s ‘mountains’ do not look very mountainous and a river seems more likely than a lake. Rather than the Dee or the Ribble, the other rivers visited in this sketchbook, this might be the Calder, perhaps near or looking away from the bridge at Whalley. For Turner’s visit to Whalley in 1808 and his drawings of the bridge and abbey, see Introduction to the sketchbook. An identification as Whalley, while tentative, might be supported by the foreground activity described by Finberg, since Turner included similar motifs in his picture Whalley Bridge and Abbey, Lancashire: Dyers Washing and Drying Cloth (private collection)1 exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1811.
1
Butlin and Joll 1984, pp.83–4 no.117 (pl.124).
Verso:
Blank, save for offsets of watercolour.

David Blayney Brown
May 2010

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘?The River Calder near Whalley Bridge, with a Man Fishing and a Washerwoman 1808 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2010, 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-the-river-calder-near-whalley-bridge-with-a-man-fishing-and-r1134470, accessed 28 March 2024.