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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Raby Castle and Staindrop 1817

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 29 Verso:
Raby Castle and Staindrop 1817
D12285
Turner Bequest CLVI 15
Pencil on white wove paper, 232 x 328 mm
Inscribed in pencil ‘15’ bottom right, apparently written over another number
Stamped in black ‘CLVI 15’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The castle is seen from the south, with the flagpole on Bulmer’s Tower at the right. The village of Staindrop is in the middle distance, about half a mile south of the castle, with the tower of St Mary’s Church on the right. The rising ground beyond the castle was the vantage point for panoramic studies looking back in this direction on folios 19 recto, 18 recto and 17 verso (D12278, D12296, D12297; CLVI 11a, 21a–22), and folios 21 recto and 20 verso (D12300, D12301; CLVI 23a–24), which were used for Turner’s 1818 painting Raby Castle, the Seat of the Earl of Darlington (Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore).1
There is a rougher sketch from further south of Staindrop on folio 19 verso (D12277; CLVI 11). As now bound and foliated, sketches of the castle and its surroundings fill most of the second half of the sketchbook, from folio 17 recto (D12298; CLVI 22a) to folio 32 recto (D12309; CLVI 28).

Matthew Imms
February 2010

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.101–2 no.136, pl.142 (colour).

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Raby Castle and Staindrop 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-raby-castle-and-staindrop-r1139507, accessed 28 March 2024.