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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > North of England 1797-1801 > Tweed and Lakes Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Wakefield: The Bridge and Chantry c.1797

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Wakefield: The Bridge and Chantry’ c.1797
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 4 Recto:
Wakefield: The Bridge and Chantry c.1797
D01004
Turner Bequest XXXV 1a
Pencil with watercolour on white wove paper, 274 x 370 mm
Part watermark ‘1796’
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom centre
Stamped in black ‘XXXV 1 A’ bottom left, descending vertically
The subject was drawn with the page turned horizontally. Another study of the bridge at Wakefield is in the contemporary North of England sketchbook (Tate D00915; Turner Bequest XXXV 10). It prompted a finished watercolour, now in the British Museum, London.1 The chantry was built in about 1350, as a shrine where tolls could be collected to pay for the bridge. Another such chapel, nearby at Rotherham, is the subject of Turner’s drawing on folio 3 recto (D01003; Turner Bequest XXXV 1). A small view of Wakefield after Turner was engraved and published in Walker’s Copper-Plate Magazine, in June 1798 (Tate impression: T05903). That watercolour is untraced;2 it is a completely different view from either this or the drawing in the North of England book and must be assumed to have been based on another artist’s work. There is a larger pencil study of the subject as recorded in the North of England book on a loose sheet (Tate D01095; Turner Bequest XXXVI A).
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.326 no.241, reproduced.
2
Ibid., p.312 no.101.
Technical notes:
There are smears of grey and yellow colour along the outer edge of the leaf.
Verso:
Blank; stamped in brown ink with Turner Bequest monogram.

Andrew Wilton
August 2010

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Wakefield: The Bridge and Chantry c.1797 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2010, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-wakefield-the-bridge-and-chantry-r1150169, accessed 25 April 2024.