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

The drawing continues to the left, half way across folio 6 verso opposite (D40723). The two-page view is the basis of Turner’s watercolour of the Gibside estate from the south (Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle),1 engraved in 1819 as Gibside, Co. of Durham, for Surtees’s History of Durham (see the introduction to the tour).

Michael Rudd notes that the wall at the bottom right runs along West Wood, and that smoke depicted in the watercolour in the Leapmill Burn valley beyond may indicate the quarries then operating there.2 This half of the drawing focuses on the south front of the house at Gibside, now screened by an avenue of trees along the Long Walk, with the Column of British Liberty rising to its north-east. Over the brow of the hillside between them, as Rudd has observed,3 is the Derwent Valley towards Winlaton Scar, Turner’s viewpoint for drawings looking to Gibside from the opposite direction on folios 9 recto, 9 verso–10 recto and 10 verso (D12266–D12269; Turner Bequest CLVI 5, 5a–6, 6a).

Further studies of Gibside and the surrounding landscape are on folios 7 verso to 8 verso, folio 11 recto and 11 verso (D40724, D12270, D12271, D12272, D12273; CLVI [4 verso]–7, 7a, 8, 8a). See the introduction to the tour and the entry for D40723 for more on the history of the house and estate.

Technical notes:

There is some rubbing and staining to the right-hand edge of the page. A short tear half way down that edge has been repaired from the verso (D40724).