Joseph Mallord William Turner Looking across Ullswater from Gowbarrow Park 1797
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 56 Recto:
Looking across Ullswater from Gowbarrow Park 1797
D01044
Turner Bequest XXXV 42
Turner Bequest XXXV 42
Pencil on white wove paper, 274 x 370 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Do’ (i.e. ditto) bottom right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘XXXV 42’ bottom left, descending vertically
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Do’ (i.e. ditto) bottom right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘XXXV 42’ bottom left, descending vertically
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.75, XXXV 42, as ‘Ullswater; Gowbarrow. “Do.”’.
1979
Eric Shanes, Turner’s Picturesque Views in England and Wales 1825–1838, London 1979, p.155.
1979
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.363 under no.551.
1980
David Hill, Stanley Warburton, Mary Tussey and others, Turner in Yorkshire, exhibition catalogue, York City Art Gallery 1980, p.57 under no.84.
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, p.194.
The subject was drawn with the page turned horizontally. The present author, followed by Turner scholar David Hill in 1980,1 suggested that the group of Ullswater studies on this page and folios 54 recto and 57 recto (D01042, D01045; Turner Bequest XXXV 40, 43) were all used by Turner as points of reference for his watercolour of the lake executed for Walter Fawkes in about 1815 (Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester).2 In 1996, however, Hill concluded that the watercolour derived only from the present leaf. The drawing on this page is certainly the closest, but Turner no doubt referred to all his Ullswater studies in evolving the final image of the place. As Hill notes, the most prominent feature of the view was not visible when Turner drew it: St Sunday Crag is hidden by cloud. The hill to the left is Place Fell; Glenridding Dodd is on the right. Hill argues that the Fawkes watercolour may in fact have been worked up from a colour study perhaps made on the spot; this seems unlikely.
Turner referred to this drawing again in the 1830s when making a watercolour view of Ullswater for the series of Picturesque Views in England and Wales (Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere),3 engraved in 1835 (no Tate impression); there, the geography of the subject has been so altered as to be almost unrecognisable.
Verso:
Blank; stamped in brown ink with Turner Bequest monogram; inscribed by A.J. Finberg in pencil ‘141.42’.
Andrew Wilton
August 2010
How to cite
Andrew Wilton, ‘Looking across Ullswater from Gowbarrow Park 1797 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2010, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2014, https://www