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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > East Anglia, Sussex and Yorkshire 1824 > Brighton and Arundel Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Two Views of Kirkstall Abbey c.1824

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Two Views of Kirkstall Abbey’ c.1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 57 Recto:
Two Views of Kirkstall Abbey c.1824
D18395
Turner Bequest CCX 51
Pencil on white wove paper, 75 x 118 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Old Wall at [...]’ top towards left
Inscribed in blue ink by Ruskin ‘51’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CCX–51’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The principal sketch shows Kirkstall Abbey, a twelfth-century Cistercian monastery, from a northeasterly perspective. Kirkstall Bridge (Tate D07272–D07273, D07278; Turner Bequest CVII 15–16, 21) can be seen crossing the Aire at left and atop the ridge is Armley Park, the estate of the wealthy Leeds cloth manufacturer Benjamin Gott (1762–1840).1 At top left is a slight sketch of the same view taken at a greater distance and inscribed ‘Old Wall at [...]’. Part of the Abbey nave is rendered at top right.
These sketches are associated with Turner’s watercolour of Kirkstall Abbey produced for W.B. Cooke’s Rivers of England series (Tate D18146; Turner Bequest CCVIII M and Tate impressions T04810, T04811, T06371).2 See also Tate D18390; Turner Bequest CCX 48.

Alice Rylance-Watson
February 2015

1
R. G. Wilson, ‘Gott, Benjamin (1762–1840)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009, accessed 25 February 2015, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/49967
2
For more information see Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Kirkstall Abbey, on the River Aire 1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, August 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-kirkstall-abbey-on-the-river-aire-r1146210.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Two Views of Kirkstall Abbey c.1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-two-views-of-kirkstall-abbey-r1181282, accessed 19 September 2024.