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

This is the left part of a double-page spread continued to the right on folio 24 recto (D11593; Turner Bequest CXLVIII 41a, now bound opposite), recording the view of Richmond from the south, looking over the bridge to Bargate at the left, with the castle directly opposite. Dated by the present writer to Tuesday 30 July 1816, this sketch formed the basis of a studio watercolour, Richmond Castle and Town, Yorkshire (currently untraced),1 painted about 1816–18 for Thomas Dunham Whitaker’s projected General History of the County of York (see sketchbook introduction) and engraved by J. Archer in 1820 for the completed part, History of Richmondshire. Turner sketched a similar view on a separate visit later in the summer of 1816, in the Yorkshire 3 sketchbook (Tate D11412; Turner Bequest CXLVI 27).

Finberg wrongly associated this page with D11543 (Turner Bequest CXLVIII 13, now bound as folio 25 recto). The mistake had been noticed and the book rebound prior to the present writer’s 1984 book.