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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Farnley Hall and Yorkshire c.1808-24 > Farnley Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Valley of the River Wharfe from Caley Crags, with Almscliff Crag and Pool Bridge in the Distance 1818

Image 1 of 2
  • Enhanced image
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Valley of the River Wharfe from Caley Crags, with Almscliff Crag and Pool Bridge in the Distance’ 1818
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 12 Recto:
The Valley of the River Wharfe from Caley Crags, with Almscliff Crag and Pool Bridge in the Distance 1818
D12014
Turner Bequest CLIII 12
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 185 mm
Inscribed in pencil, perhaps not by Turner, ‘Gosforth’
Stamped in black ‘CLIII 12’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is the right part of a double-page spread continued from D12013; Turner Bequest CLIII 11a, opposite, recording the view from Caley Crags looking north-east across the Wharfe Valley, with Almscliff Crag in the left distance, the junction of the Rivers Wharfe and Washburn below, with Leathley Church to the left, and to the right Pool Bridge over the Wharfe, and below the crags, slightly to the right, the roof of Caley Hall. Turner sketched the same material from a slightly lower viewpoint on the following pages (D12015–D12016; Turner Bequest CLIII 12a–13). The sketch informed a watercolour, View across the Wharfe, from Caley Park (private collection)1 painted for Walter Fawkes of Farnley Hall about 1818. See notes to D12013 for comment, and for Caley Crags in this sketchbook.
The inscription ‘Gosforth’ does not appear to be in Turner’s hand, and is probably by the same hand as the inscription on D11996; Turner Bequest CLIII 1. Walter Fawkes’s sister, Frances Elizabeth, was married to Charles John Brandling of Gosforth Park, near Newcastle, and it may be that the inscription denotes the intended destination of the finished watercolour. In the event it seems to have taken its place in the Farnley collection.

David Hill
June 2009

1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.371 no.618.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘The Valley of the River Wharfe from Caley Crags, with Almscliff Crag and Pool Bridge in the Distance 1818 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2009, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-valley-of-the-river-wharfe-from-caley-crags-with-r1146647, accessed 06 May 2025.