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 The River Tees from Wycliffe 1816

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The River Tees from Wycliffe’ 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 28 Recto:
The River Tees from Wycliffe 1816
D11485
Turner Bequest CXLVII 28
Pencil on white wove paper, 125 x 206 mm
Watermarked ‘[WHA]TMAN | [18]14’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Wycliff’ bottom right
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in blue ink ‘279’ bottom right and ‘28’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CXLVII 28’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s sketch is taken from the terrace of Wycliffe Hall (for which see notes to folio 26 recto; D11482), looking downstream on the River Tees. Turner continued the sketch to the right, to include part of the house, on folio 29 recto (D11487). A similar view was recorded in 1805 by John Sell Cotman, in a watercolour usually called On the Tees, near Rockliffe (Victoria and Albert Museum, London).1 Turner also sketched the view upstream from Wycliffe in the Yorkshire 2 sketchbook (Tate D11210; Turner Bequest CXLV 104a). The present writer has dated Turner’s sketches in the Wycliffe area to Thursday 1 August 1816.

David Hill
February 2009

1
See David Hill, Cotman in the North, 2005, pp.127 (where reproduced), 128, re-identified as Wycliffe. Cotman’s view takes in less at the right. The difference in emphasis is striking, Cotman exaggerating the horizontal axis, and Turner the vertical.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘The River Tees from Wycliffe 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-the-river-tees-from-wycliffe-r1143620, accessed 19 April 2024.