J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

This is the left part of a double-page spread continued to the right on folio 22 recto (D11539; Turner Bequest CXLVIII 11, now bound opposite), recording the view from the left bank of the River Swale, looking upstream to Richmond Mill and Castle to the left and at the edge of this page the tower of Holy Trinity Church and the market square obelisk, with on the opposite page St Mary’s Church with Greyfriars Tower beyond. The present writer dates this sketch to Wednesday 31 July 1816. It formed the basis of a studio watercolour, Richmond, Yorkshire (Victoria and Albert Museum, London),1 painted about 1816–17 for Thomas Dunham Whitaker’s projected General History of the County of York (see sketchbook introduction) and engraved by W.R. Smith in 1819 for the completed part, History of Richmondshire.