Joseph Mallord William Turner High Force, River Tees: Distant View 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 17 Verso:
High Force, River Tees: Distant View 1816
D11532
Turner Bequest CXLVIII 7a
Turner Bequest CXLVIII 7a
Pencil on white wove paper, 173 x 260 mm
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.426, CXLVIII 7a, as ‘A waterfall’.
1979
Eric Shanes, Turner’s Picturesque Views in England and Wales 1825–1838, London 1979, p.156 (the subject identified as High Force, pl.7).
1980
David Hill, Stanley Warburton, Mary Tussey and others, Turner in Yorkshire, exhibition catalogue, York City Art Gallery 1980, pp.92–3, no.145.
1983
John Gage, Jerrold Ziff, Nicholas Alfrey and others, J.M.W. Turner, à l’occasion du cinquantième anniversaire du British Council, exhibition catalogue, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris 1983, pp.203–4, no.126 (where incorrectly associated with Tate D25492; Turner Bequest CCLXIII 369).
1984
David Hill, In Turner’s Footsteps: Through the Hills and Dales of Northern England, London 1984, pp.30, 72–3 reproduced, 127.
2000
Eric Shanes, Evelyn Joll, Ian Warrell et al., Turner: The Great Watercolours, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy of Arts, London 2000, no.86.
2008
Simeran Maxwell in Christine Dixon, Ron Radford, Lucina Ward and others, Turner to Monet: The Triumph of Landscape Painting, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2008, p.104, no.29.
This distant view of High Force is taken from the right bank of the River Tees. It formed the basis of a studio watercolour of Fall of the Tees, Yorkshire (Indianapolis Museum of Art),1 which was presumably planned to illustrate Thomas Dunham Whitaker’s proposed seven-volume General History of the County of York (see sketchbook introduction). In the event, however, the watercolour was not painted until about 1825 and was engraved by Edward Goodall in 1827 for Turner’s series of Picturesque View in England and Wales. The present writer has dated Turner’s sketches at High Force to Saturday 3 August 1816.
David Hill
May 2009
How to cite
David Hill, ‘High Force, River Tees: Distant View 1816 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2009, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2013, https://www