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 1 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Ellenthorpe Hall, near Boroughbridge, Looking down the River Ure 1816

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Ellenthorpe Hall, near Boroughbridge, Looking down the River Ure’ 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 30 Recto:
Ellenthorpe Hall, near Boroughbridge, Looking down the River Ure 1816
D10922
Turner Bequest CXLIV 30
Pencil on white wove paper, 97 x 154 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Ellenthorpe Ouse B B’
Very faint trace of an inscription in red ink, possibly by John Ruskin, bottom right, and another 30’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CXLIV 30’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Ellenthorpe Hall overlooks the River Ure a mile and a half east of Boroughbridge. Turner’s inscription ‘Ouse’ is mistaken; but see notes to folio 25 verso of the sketchbook (D10914), where he sketched the view towards the house from a little further downstream, where the same poplar trees can be seen from the opposite direction.

The present Ellenthorpe Hall is a square, brick, gentleman-farmer’s house, probably of very late Georgian or early Victorian date. Of the building depicted by Turner (sometimes traditionally called Ellingthorp) there is now no sign, but it appears to have been a two-storey late medieval building, with a Jacobean or early Baroque portal, and a large, probably seventeenth-century gabled manor farmhouse attached. The building was presumably the remnant of a more extensive medieval complex. In Turner’s time it was owned by the Clark family. Turner’s sketch shows the old building to be alarmingly close to the river, which probably accounts for its disappearance, and for the present farmhouse being built well back from the water.

David Hill
January 2009

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Ellenthorpe Hall, near Boroughbridge, Looking down the River Ure 1816 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 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-ellenthorpe-hall-near-boroughbridge-looking-down-the-river-r1144110, accessed 16 April 2024.