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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > County Durham and Northumberland 1817 > Raby Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Trees and Buildings Including the Gatehouses at Raby Castle; Part of a View of Raby, with a Smaller Repetition 1817

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Trees and Buildings Including the Gatehouses at Raby Castle; Part of a View of Raby, with a Smaller Repetition’ 1817
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 17 Recto:
Trees and Buildings Including the Gatehouses at Raby Castle; Part of a View of Raby, with a Smaller Repetition 1817
D12298
Turner Bequest CLVI 22a
Pencil on white wove paper, 232 x 328 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil with various notes (see main catalogue entry)
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘549. B’ bottom left, and ‘174’ circled bottom right
Inscribed in pencil ‘283’ top right, possibly in two different hands or with an alteration
Inscribed in blue pencil ‘183’ towards top right (now very faint)
Inscribed in pencil ‘22a’ top left, upside down
Inscribed in pencil ‘22a’ bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Towards the lower left are the twin castellated North Lodge gatehouses about a quarter of a mile north-east of Raby Castle, fronting the Barnard Castle-Bishop Auckland road at Keverstone Bank; one of them has also been drawn separately in more detail. Turner has made extensive notes adjacent to relevant features, sketched in isolation: ‘wall’ below the trees at centre left; ‘cottage’ above the building to their right; ‘smoke’ above the view of both gatehouses towards bottom left and ‘White band around windows and archs’ below them; ‘sycamore | 1’ and ‘Belonging to Raby’ below the first of the trees at the centre; ‘ash | 2’ below the second, and ‘3’ below the third; ‘White Band | ...ed Black’ and ‘cottage in the | Park’ to the left and right of the gabled building to the left of centre at the bottom.
This sketchbook has been disbound, dispersed for exhibition and rebound (see the introduction), demonstrably in the wrong order in this case, as the landscape sketch on the right of the present page (beginning to the right of the three separate central trees) was originally continuous with the full-page drawing on what is now folio 21 verso (D12299; CLVI 23). That view shows Raby Castle and its park from the north-west; two of the three numbered trees carefully drawn and numbered on the present page can also be seen to the left on the other page, with the third on the hillside to the right, again numbered ‘3’ as here.
Below the miniature repetition of the overall view at the bottom right, where the three trees appear again in the same sequence, Turner has noted ‘wall’, ‘ash and holly’, ‘ash’, ‘[?General corner] of Ground by the ash tree’, ‘Path’ and ‘Old | [?s...]’.
As now bound and foliated, this is the first of the many sketches of Raby Castle and its surroundings which fill most of the second half of the sketchbook; the last is on folio 32 recto (D12309; CLVI 28).
Technical notes:
There is a brown stain and some abrasion at the top left corner, which has bled through from to other side of the leaf (D12297; Turner Bequest CLVI 22). Presumably this dates from the mounting of that page for display.

Matthew Imms
February 2010

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Trees and Buildings Including the Gatehouses at Raby Castle; Part of a View of Raby, with a Smaller Repetition 1817 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 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-trees-and-buildings-including-the-gatehouses-at-raby-castle-r1139482, accessed 18 April 2024.