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 The River Greta, near Brignall 1816

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The River Greta, near Brignall’ 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 19 Verso:
The River Greta, near Brignall 1816
D11566
Turner Bequest CXLVIII 26a
Pencil on white wove paper, 173 x 260 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This view looks down the River Greta from above 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 sang ‘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 the riverside in the Yorkshire 4 sketchbook (Tate D11486; Turner Bequest CXLVII 28a) and the same rocks from a greater distance upstream on folio 20 recto of the present book (D11571; Turner Bequest CXLVIII 29, now bound opposite). This writer has dated Turner’s sketches at Brignall to Thursday 1 August 1816.

David Hill
May 2009

How to cite

David Hill, ‘The River Greta, near Brignall 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-the-river-greta-near-brignall-r1143694, accessed 26 April 2024.