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 > Yorkshire Subjects around Farnley and ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Trees beside Water, Perhaps Lake Tiny on the Farnley Estate c.1816-24

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Trees beside Water, Perhaps Lake Tiny on the Farnley Estate’ c.1816-24
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Trees beside Water, Perhaps Lake Tiny on the Farnley Estate c.1816–24
D25157
Turner Bequest CCLXIII 35
Watercolour on white wove paper, 353 x 518 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Inscribed in red ink ‘35’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXIII – 35’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Since, in making the only published suggestion as to this somewhat generic and landmark-free work’s subject, Eric Shanes has tentatively proposed it as a view of Lake Tiny,1 near the River Washburn on Walter Fawkes’s Farnley estate, it has been placed in this section. The dating is highly speculative, placing it between Turner’s extensive Yorkshire tour of 1816 including time at Farnley, and his last visit in 1824; see under Tate D17771 (Turner Bequest CCIII N), one of five views of trees beside the Washburn perhaps made on that last occasion. Three finished watercolours of Lake Tiny, made for Fawkes around 1818 (private collection; Hereford Museum; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery)2 show wider vistas.
The subject is effectively insoluble, and if not associated with Farnley the sheet might date from considerably later. Finberg linked it with Tate D25136 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 14), dated in the present catalogue to about 1834 and connected with a subject in the Picturesque Views in England and Wales series, presumably on the formal grounds of their fortuitously sharing strong diagonal bands of light and shadow running down from the top right.3
1
See Shanes 1997, p.103.
2
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.370 no.606, reproduced, ibid., no.607, reproduced, and p.372 no.621, reproduced.
3
See Lindsay 1966, pl.IV, reproducing the two together.
Verso:
Blank; inscribed by ?John Ruskin in pencil ‘AB 92 P | O’ towards bottom right; inscribed in pencil ‘CCLXIII.35’ towards bottom right; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram over ‘CCLXIII – 35’ towards bottom left.

Matthew Imms
September 2016

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Trees beside Water, Perhaps Lake Tiny on the Farnley Estate c.1816–24 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2016, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-trees-beside-water-perhaps-lake-tiny-on-the-farnley-estate-r1183708, accessed 19 April 2024.