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 Greta, Looking Downstream from near Brignall Church 1816

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The River Greta, Looking Downstream from near Brignall Church’ 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 28 Verso:
The River Greta, Looking Downstream from near Brignall Church 1816
D11486
Turner Bequest CXLVII 28a
Pencil on white wove paper, 125 x 206 mm
Watermarked ‘[WHA]TMAN | [18]14’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Bignall’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
In this sketch Turner records the view down the River Greta from near Brignall Church. In his work around Brignall in 1816 Turner was almost certainly influenced by Sir Walter Scott’s poem Rokeby published in 1813. Scott sings ‘O Brignall Banks are wild and fair | And Greta woods are green’, and this sketch is (unusually for this tour) focused exclusively on natural features. Turner sketched the same material from a higher viewpoint in the Yorkshire 5 sketchbook (Tate D11566; Turner Bequest TB CXLVIII 26a), which accompanied him on the same tour. The present writer has dated Turner’s sketches at Brignall to Thursday 1 August 1816.

David Hill
February 2009

How to cite

David Hill, ‘The River Greta, Looking Downstream from near Brignall Church 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-greta-looking-downstream-from-near-brignall-church-r1143621, accessed 27 April 2024.