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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Tour of Yorkshire 1816 > Yorkshire 4 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Bolton Castle, Wensleydale, from the West 1816

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Bolton Castle, Wensleydale, from the West’ 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 17 Recto:
Bolton Castle, Wensleydale, from the West 1816
D11468
Turner Bequest CXLVII 17
Pencil on white wove paper, 125 x 206 mm
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in blue ink ‘279’ bottom right and ‘17’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CXLVII 17’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Bolton Castle is at the village of Castle Bolton on the north flank of Wensleydale about two miles north-east of Aysgarth. The castle was built in the years 1379–99 by Sir Richard Le Scrope, Lord Chancellor of England, and is famous as the site of the imprisonment of Mary Queen of Scots in 1569. It has since descended through the Lords Bolton, and is today opened to the public.
Here, Turner shows its western flank, with the tower of Castle Bolton Church immediately left of the castle and the entrance stairway to the right leading to the base of the south-west tower. He sketched a similar view in the Yorkshire 2 sketchbook (Tate D11249; Turner Bequest CXLV 124a), which accompanied him on the same tour.

David Hill
February 2009

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Bolton Castle, Wensleydale, from the West 1816 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2009, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-bolton-castle-wensleydale-from-the-west-r1143602, accessed 26 April 2024.