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

This folio served on one side (D40047) as the outer wrapper and last page of a letter addressed to ‘Walter Fawkes Esqre, Farnley Hall, Otley, Yorkshire’, folded in on itself and sealed. On the opposite side to the address is a sketch of Hall Beck Gill,1 not far from Farnley in the Upper Washburn Valley. It is not clear whether the sketch formed part of the original letter, or whether Turner drew it later.

The subject of the sketch has been mistakenly identified as Gordale Scar.2 The distant valley closure is like Gordale, but the foreground crags are identifiable instead as the Dovestone in Hall Beck Gill, near Farnley Hall, the Yorkshire home of Turner’s patron Walter Fawkes. The variety of figures in the sketch is interesting. The three to the right are female; one with an umbrella (or parasol) and another seated on the ground, perhaps sketching. The Dovestone is not much visited today, but its south-facing aspect and commanding situation provides an obvious place to picnic. On the spot it is noticeable that Turner’s viewpoint is on steeply sloping and uneven ground, and also uncomfortably close to the crag. Evidently there is some contrivance in the way Turner presents his material here. The view of the end of the valley seems taken from a different viewpoint, more distant and lower than the view of the crag.

There are other sketches of the Dovestone and Hall Beck Gill in the Large Farnley sketchbook (Tate D09023; Turner Bequest CXXVIII 7), and others in the Devonshire Rivers, No.3, and Wharfedale sketchbook (Tate D09798, D09799, D09804; Turner Bequest CXXXIV 9, 10, and 14) and the Yorkshire 6 sketchbook (D11900, D11901; Turner Bequest CXLIX 299, 298a &c) but none from the same viewpoint as this. Turner stayed at Farnley most years between 1808 and 1824 and presumably visited the site on a number of occasions.