Joseph Mallord William Turner High Force, River Tees 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 18 Verso:
High Force, River Tees 1816
D11536
Turner Bequest CXLVIII 9a
Turner Bequest CXLVIII 9a
Pencil on white wove paper, 173 x 260 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil with colour notes ‘D G’, ‘Colour RBY Brown’ (in a rainbow at the foot of the falls)
Inscribed by Turner in pencil with colour notes ‘D G’, ‘Colour RBY Brown’ (in a rainbow at the foot of the falls)
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.426, CXLVIII 9a. as ‘A waterfall. Probably High Force. Tees’.
1980
David Hill, Stanley Warburton, Mary Tussey and others, Turner in Yorkshire, exhibition catalogue, York City Art Gallery 1980, pp.80, 82, no.125, as ‘High Force’.
1982
Stanley Warburton, Turner and Dr. Whitaker, exhibition catalogue, Towneley Hall Art Gallery & Museums, Burnley 1982, no.47.
1984
David Hill, In Turner’s Footsteps: Through the Hills and Dales of Northern England, London 1984, pp.30, 72 (reproduced), 73, 127.
2008
Simeran Maxwell in Christine Dixon, Ron Radford, Lucina Ward and others, Turner to Monet: The Triumph of Landscape Painting, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2008, p.104, no.29.
This sketch is taken from the foot of High Force, looking across the pool to the main cascade. Turner made several other sketches of the subject in the Yorkshire 2 sketchbook (Tate D11204, D11203, D11202; Turner Bequest CXLV 101a, 101, 100a), and Yorkshire 4 sketchbook (D11496; Turner Bequest CXLVII 34) and together these observations formed the basis of two finished watercolours. One of these, High Force, or Fall of Tees (private collection)1 was painted about 1816–18 for Thomas Dunham Whitaker’s projected General History of the County of York and engraved by John Landseer in 1822 for published section, History of Richmondshire. Another, High Force, Fall of the Tees, Yorkshire (Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia)2 was painted about the same time for Turner’s patron Walter Fawkes of Farnley Hall. The Fawkes version differs comprehensively in its small details from the engraved version. The present writer has dated Turner’s sketches at High Force to Saturday 3 August 1816.
David Hill
May 2009
How to cite
David Hill, ‘High Force, River Tees 1816 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2009, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2013, https://www