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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Tour of Yorkshire 1816 > Yorkshire 1 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Spofforth Castle from the West 1816

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Spofforth Castle from the West’ 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 1 Verso:
Spofforth Castle from the West 1816
D10869
Turner Bequest CXLIV 1a
Pencil on white wove paper, 97 x 154 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is a close and detailed study of the west range of Spofforth Castle. The subject is sketched from a greater distance on folio 2 of the sketchbook (D10870), opposite. Turner had drawn the same subject in 1797 in the North of England sketchbook (Tate D00984; Turner Bequest XXXIV 75).
Spofforth lies between Harrogate and Wetherby, and offered the first subject on Turner’s tour of central Yorkshire in 1816 as he set off eastwards from Farnley Hall, the home of his Yorkshire patron Walter Fawkes. Spofforth was from Norman times the home of the Percy family, who later established themselves at Alnwick Castle in Northumberland. The earliest part of the present fortified manor house is a twelfth-century undercroft. The main part of the building visible here dates from the fifteenth century.

David Hill
January 2009

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Spofforth Castle from the West 1816 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2009, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-spofforth-castle-from-the-west-r1144056, accessed 20 May 2024.