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

This sketch was probably the first to be entered in the sketchbook, which Turner seems to have begun using from the back as presently numbered. It is the first of a sequence of sketches recording a shoot in the area of Hall Beck Gill and Beamsley Beacon, about five miles north-west of Farnley Hall, the home of Turner’s Yorkshire friend and patron, Walter Fawkes. Other sketches in the same area occur in the Large Farnley sketchbook (Tate D09023; Turner Bequest CXXVIII 7) and in the Devonshire Rivers, No.3, and Wharfedale sketchbook (Tate D09798, D09799, D09804; Turner Bequest CXXXIV 9, 10, 14), but it is not clear to what extent these might be contemporaneous. Here Turner records the view from a rocky eminence at the head of Hall Beck Gill, looking east over the valley to Round Hill and Beamsley Beacon. The summit of Round Hill is the viewpoint of a sketch of grouse shooting on Beamsley Beacon in the Large Farnley sketchbook (Tate D09024; Turner Bequest CXXVIII 8).