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 Marrick Priory, Swaledale, from the East 1816

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Marrick Priory, Swaledale, from the East’ 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 19 Recto:
Marrick Priory, Swaledale, from the East 1816
D11471
Turner Bequest CXLVII 19
Pencil on white wove paper, 125 x 206 mm
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in blue ink ‘279’ bottom right and ‘19’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CXLVII 19’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Marrick Priory stands above the north bank of the River Swale about six miles south-east of Richmond, and a half-mile or so west of the village of Marrick. It was founded in 1150 as a community of Benedictine nuns, and was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1540. It is now an outdoor education and residential centre. This sketch records the view from the east, which is now obscured by trees. The sketch formed the basis of a studio watercolour of Merrick Abbey, Swaledale (Tochigi Prefectural Museum, Japan)1 engraved by J.C. Varrall for Thomas Dunham Whitaker’s History of Richmondshire, part of the projected seven volume General History of the County of York (see Introduction to the sketchbook), and published in December 1822.
Turner sketched a similar view in the Yorkshire 2 sketchbook (Tate D11239; Turner Bequest CXLV 119a), which accompanied him on the same tour.

David Hill
February 2009

1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg, p.345 no.569.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Marrick Priory, Swaledale, from the East 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-marrick-priory-swaledale-from-the-east-r1143606, accessed 24 September 2024.