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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > North Wales 1799-1801 > Lancashire and North Wales Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Whalley: The Bridge, with the Abbey Beyond 1799

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Whalley: The Bridge, with the Abbey Beyond’ 1799
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 35 Verso:
Whalley: The Bridge, with the Abbey Beyond 1799
D01969
Turner Bequest XLV 35a
Pencil on white wove paper, 225 x 329 mm
Watermark ‘1794 | J Whatman’
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘X’ and ‘X’ towards top left in the drawing
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This view was taken a few metres upstream of that on folio 34 verso (D01967). Turner chose not to include Whalley Bridge in any of his finished subjects, though he returned to it on a subsequent visit to the neighbourhood in 1808, when he made a fresh drawing in his Tabley No.1 sketchbook (Tate D06837; Turner Bequest CIII 8), and later executed an oil painting, shown at the Royal Academy in 1811 under the title Whalley Bridge and Abbey, Lancashire: Dyers Washing and Drying cloth (private collection, on loan to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford);1 its first owner was Thomas Lister Parker (see the sketchbook’s introduction). The subject of the oil, in fact, barely affords a glimpse of the Abbey buildings between the arches of the bridge; here, they are fully visible, even if the site is foreshortened in this perspective. See also folios 44 recto and 45 recto (D01983, D01984; Turner Bequest XLV 43, 44).

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.83–4 no.117, pl.124 (colour).

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Whalley: The Bridge, with the Abbey Beyond 1799 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-whalley-the-bridge-with-the-abbey-beyond-r1177844, accessed 23 April 2024.