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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > West Country and Yorkshire 1814-17 > Devon Rivers, No.2 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Farnley Hall from the Avenue ?1814

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Farnley Hall from the Avenue’ ?1814
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 77 Verso:
Farnley Hall from the Avenue ?1814
D09776
Turner Bequest CXXXIII 77a
Pencil on white wove paper, 110 x 178 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
As has been recognised,1 this view, with the southern end of the west side of Farnley Hall seen in the distance through trees, is the basis of a watercolour of The Avenue, Farnley (Bolton Museums),2 which has been variously dated to about 18153 or 1818.4 More recently the sketch itself has been dated to ‘1816 or earlier’,5 and evidence has been presented to suggest that a gentlemen’s agreement commissioning the series of Farnley views with which The Avenue has been associated occurred in 1816.6
There is a similar, rougher, view on folio 78 recto opposite (D09777), showing only the trees on each side, which can almost be read as a continuation upwards from the present sketch, and the forms of the boughs and branches shown there appear to have informed the watercolour to an extent. See the Introduction to the sketchbook for other Farnley and nearby Yorkshire views in this book.

Matthew Imms
July 2014

1
See Hill and others 1980, p.42.
2
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.369 no.600, pl.129.
3
Hill and others 1980, p.42, as ‘c.1815?’.
4
Wilton 1979, p.369.
5
Karen Lynch and David Hill, ‘Turner runs Riot: A Newly Discovered Reminiscence of Turner’, Turner Society News, no.96, March 2004, p.12 note 20.
6
See ibid., p.12 and note 19.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Farnley Hall from the Avenue ?1814 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-farnley-hall-from-the-avenue-r1147327, accessed 13 January 2025.