Joseph Mallord William Turner Barnard Castle and Bridge on the River Tees, from the North-West 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 32 Recto:
Barnard Castle and Bridge on the River Tees, from the North-West 1816
D11493
Turner Bequest CXLVII 32
Turner Bequest CXLVII 32
Pencil on white wove paper, 125 x 206 mm
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in blue ink ‘279’ bottom right and ‘32’ top and bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXLVII 32’ bottom right
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in blue ink ‘279’ bottom right and ‘32’ top and bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXLVII 32’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.425, CXLVII 32, as ‘Ruins of Castle (?) on hill, with bridge below’.
1984
David Hill, In Turner’s Footsteps: Through the Hills and Dales of Northern England, London 1984, pp.31 as ‘Barnard Castle and bridge [&c]’, 71, 127.
1996
David Hill, Turner in the North: A Tour through Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland, the Scottish Borders, the Lake District, Lancashire and Lincolnshire in the Year 1797, New Haven and London 1996, pp.48, 191, XXXIV 29, 199, note 68.
1990
Eric Shanes, Turner’s England 1810–38, London 1990, p.172, no.142.
2006
Emma House, Michael Rudd and Paul Clark, Joseph Mallord William Turner: Tours of Durham and Richmondshire, exhibition catalogue, Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle 2006, p.34.
Taken from a viewpoint on the left bank of the River Tees, slightly upstream of Barnard Castle Bridge, this sketch returns to a site drawn in 1797 in the North of England sketchbook (Tate D00935; Turner Bequest XXXIV 29). Comparing the two sketches it will be noted that the chapel visible on the bridge in 1797 has disappeared by 1816. This writer has formerly described the present aspect as north-east but in fact it is north-west.1 Together, Turner’s two sketches formed the basis of a studio watercolour Barnard Castle (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut)2 painted in about 1825 and engraved in 1827 for the series Picturesque Views in England and Wales. Turner sketched similar views in the Yorkshire 2 sketchbook (Tate D11207, D11208; Turner Bequest CXLV 103, 103a), which accompanied him on the tour of 1816, and returned to the subject again in 1831 in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border sketchbook (Tate D25825; Turner Bequest CCLXVI 33).
Barnard Castle dates from the late eleventh century, but assumed its present form under Bernard de Balliol in the early twelfth. The present bridge is medieval in origin but was extensively repaired or rebuilt in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Turner’s viewpoints are readily accessible on public footpaths, and the castle is in the care of English Heritage.
Verso:
Blank
David Hill
February 2009
How to cite
David Hill, ‘Barnard Castle and Bridge on the River Tees, from the North-West 1816 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2009, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2013, https://www