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 > Large Farnley Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Grouse Shooting with Dogs and Horses on the Moors near Beamsley Beacon c.1816

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Grouse Shooting with Dogs and Horses on the Moors near Beamsley Beacon’ c.1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 8 Recto:
Grouse Shooting with Dogs and Horses on the Moors near Beamsley Beacon c.1816
D09024
Turner Bequest CXXVIII 8
Pencil on white wove paper, 285 x 460 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘water’ lower centre, ‘Black Pool’ bottom right, ‘Ling’ [heather] in left distance, ‘Light’ in centre distance and distance right and ‘Grass’ in right centre distance
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in red ink ‘8’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXXVIII 8’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with the Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Here, Turner is looking west from near the summit of Round Hill, about six miles north-west of Walter Fawkes’s seat Farnley Hall, with the northern escarpment of Skipton Moor at the far left, and panning right across Barden Moor on the centre skyline to Earl’s Seat at the right. The drawing served as the basis of a watercolour of Grouse Shooting, Beamsley Beacon (Wallace Collection, London)1 painted for Sir William Pilkington of Stanley Chevet, near Wakefield. Oddly, the summit of Beamsley Beacon proper is just cropped outside the left edge of the field of view. The watercolour follows all the specific topographical detail and the general conception of figures, horses and dogs on the moors and a ‘Black pool’, but the contingent detail is comprehensively reworked in the finished composition. The watercolour is traditionally considered to be a pair to another watercolour painted for Pilkington, Woodcock Shooting on the Chevin (also Wallace Collection),2 which is dated 1813, but any connection does not necessarily make them contemporary.
1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.361 no.535.
2
Ibid., p.361 no.534, as ‘Woodcock Shooting on the Chiver’.
Verso:
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David Hill
October 2009

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Grouse Shooting with Dogs and Horses on the Moors near Beamsley Beacon c.1816 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 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-grouse-shooting-with-dogs-and-horses-on-the-moors-near-r1146744, accessed 26 April 2024.