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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Scotland 1801-10 > Helmsley Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Whitby from the Inner Harbour 1801

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Whitby from the Inner Harbour’ 1801
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 8 Verso:
Whitby from the Inner Harbour 1801
D02472
Turner Bequest LIII 8a
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 162 mm
Partial watermark ‘1 | J Wh’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Drawn with the page turned horizontally, this is one of a group of views of Whitby in this sketchbook; see under folio 6 recto (D02469). It appears to be the rough outline of a composition for which a more detailed drawing is on folio 9 recto opposite (D02473).
Turner is not known to have produced a finished view of Whitby at this date, though he later made a watercolour, now lost, of which an engraving was planned and at least partially executed, as discussed under D02469. He may have used the idea adumbrated here when he came to make his large watercolour of about 1802–3, Lincoln from the Holmes, Brayford (Usher Gallery, Lincoln).1

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

1
Not in Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Whitby from the Inner Harbour 1801 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-whitby-from-the-inner-harbour-r1178494, accessed 25 April 2024.