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

This is the right part of a double-page spread continued from folio 12 verso (D11580; Turner Bequest CXLVIII 33a, now bound opposite), recording the view north and north-east across the Levens Estuary, from the shore near Conishead Priory with Coniston Old Man in the distance to the left. The present writer had previously identified the viewpoint as near Canal Foot, near Ulverston, which is close by, but a little further north, and dated this sketch to Tuesday 6 August 1816. The hill in the right distance of the present sheet is the ridge of Fairfield, seen in raking light from the left, setting the time of day as evening.

See notes to D11580 for Eric Shanes’s earlier, tentative identification of this double spread as the source for the background of the watercolour of Lancaster Sands (British Museum, London)1 painted about 1825 for Turner’s series of Picturesque Views in England and Wales. This looks possible and would be appropriate to the subject, but if so, Turner has adapted the material with some freedom.