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

This is the left part of a double-page spread continued to the right on folio 26 recto (D11545; Turner Bequest CXLVIII 14, now bound opposite), depicting Richmond Castle and town from the south-east, with a glimpse of the bridge along the River Swale to the left and terminating with Greyfriars Tower at the right. The view is taken from slightly higher and further to the right than the sketch of Richmond Corn Mill running across folio 24 verso and the recto of the present leaf (D11594, D11543; Turner Bequest CXLVIII 41, 13). Dated by the present writer to Tuesday 30 July 1816, the present sketch served as the basis of a studio watercolour, Richmond Castle and Town (British Museum, London),1 presumably originally conceived for Thomas Dunham Whitaker’s proposed seven-volume General History of the County of York (see sketchbook introduction) but not painted until about 1825 and engraved by W. R. Smith in 1827 for the later series of Picturesque Views in England and Wales.