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 5 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner High Force, River Tees 1816

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘High Force, River Tees’ 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 18 Verso:
High Force, River Tees 1816
D11536
Turner Bequest CXLVIII 9a
Pencil on white wove paper, 173 x 260 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil with colour notes ‘D G’, ‘Colour RBY Brown’ (in a rainbow at the foot of the falls)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch is taken from the foot of High Force, looking across the pool to the main cascade. Turner made several other sketches of the subject in the Yorkshire 2 sketchbook (Tate D11204, D11203, D11202; Turner Bequest CXLV 101a, 101, 100a), and Yorkshire 4 sketchbook (D11496; Turner Bequest CXLVII 34) and together these observations formed the basis of two finished watercolours. One of these, High Force, or Fall of Tees (private collection)1 was painted about 1816–18 for Thomas Dunham Whitaker’s projected General History of the County of York and engraved by John Landseer in 1822 for published section, History of Richmondshire. Another, High Force, Fall of the Tees, Yorkshire (Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia)2 was painted about the same time for Turner’s patron Walter Fawkes of Farnley Hall. The Fawkes version differs comprehensively in its small details from the engraved version. The present writer has dated Turner’s sketches at High Force to Saturday 3 August 1816.

David Hill
May 2009

1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.364 no.563.
2
Ibid., pp.364–5 no.564.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘High Force, River Tees 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.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-high-force-river-tees-r1143692, accessed 23 April 2024.