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

Engraved:
Etching and mezzotint by J.M.W. Turner and Charles Turner, ‘MORPETH NORTH^D.’, published Charles Turner, 29 March 1809

Turner visited Morpeth, Northumberland – between two favourite sites, Durham and Norham Castle – on his 1801 tour of the north of England and Scotland; circling the surrounding countryside, he made several drawings in the Helmsley sketchbook (Tate D02510–D02513, D02516; Turner Bequest LIII 29, 29a, 30, 31, 33) of Morpeth Castle, or rather all that remained of it, the fourteenth century gatehouse (since restored).1 A further, slight sketch (Tate D02514, D02515; Turner Bequest LIII 31a–32), shows the view developed for the Liber Studiorum, looking south to the castle from Bridge Street, with the medieval bridge over the River Wansbeck in the foreground; the latter was later made redundant by the construction of a new bridge nearby in 1829–30 and is now only ‘fragmentarily preserved’.2

The sketch apparently shows the buttresses of the medieval chantry on the left. Turner changed this side of the composition for the Liber, adding what appears to be an inn sign, perhaps as an additional accent of chiaroscuro in counterpoint to the one in the distance across the bridge, in a composition notable for its interplay of light and shade. The heraldic symbols on it, a crescent and a ‘lion statant, the tail extended’3 on a crown (as clarified in Turner’s subsequent outline etching), are of local significance, being those of the ancient Percy family, latterly created Dukes of Northumberland. Turner had drawn the statue of such a lion on the bridge below their seat, Alnwick Castle, in his 1797 drawing in the North of England sketchbook (Tate D00951; Turner Bequest XXXIV 44), the basis of his watercolour of about 1829 for Picturesque Views in England and Wales (Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide),4 and would have known the similar statue (now at Syon House) on the façade of Northumberland House in central London.5

Subtle use is made of shadows from scaffolding (not present in the original sketch), against a white wall parallel to the picture plane, to imply the third dimension. Despite the sunlight and the busy market stalls (with another in the shadows on the left laden with children’s toys), Ruskin took the distant ruin as a symbol of the folly of ‘human pride, ... roofless and black’;6 Stopford Brooke developed this pessimistic view: ‘The drawing is then filled with the spirit of the gray North – the spirit, in the town itself, of the set sad struggle of life sternly endured through poverty and pain – the spirit, in the country beyond the town, of that rude romantic passion and battle which beats like a heart in the Border ballads.’7 The subject may have been deliberately intended as a lowly ‘Architectural’ parallel to the everyday country scenes in some of the ‘Pastoral’ plates of the Liber.8

The composition is recorded, as ‘3[:] 5 Morpeth’, in the Liber Notes (2) sketchbook (Tate D12156; Turner Bequest CLIV (a) 23a), in a draft schedule of the first ten parts of the Liber (D12156–D12158; CLIV (a) 23a–24a)9 dated by Finberg and Gillian Forrester to before the middle of 1808.10 It also appears later in the sketchbook, again as ‘Morpeth’, in a list of ‘Architecture’ subjects (Tate D12168; Turner Bequest CLIV (a) 29a).11

The Liber Studiorum etching and mezzotint engraving, etched by Turner and engraved by Charles Turner, bears the publication date 29 March 1809 and was issued to subscribers as ‘MORPETH NORTH^D.’ in part 4 (Rawlinson/Finberg nos.17–21;12 see also Tate D08121, D08122, D08123, D08125; Turner Bequest CXVI T, U, V, X). Tate holds impressions of the preliminary outline etching (Tate A00952) and the published engraving (A00953). It is one of eleven published Liber subjects in Turner’s ‘Architectural’ category (see also Tate D08110, D08115, D08118, D08131, D08135, D08142, D08154, D08157, D08160; Turner Bequest CXVI I, N, Q, CXVII D, H, O, Z, CXVIII C, F).

Technical Notes:

The sheet was not washed initially. There is pencil drawing for the figures. The larger lights were reserved; washing and brushwork, mostly worked dark on dark, were followed by some very delicate scratching-out for the lights. The overall warm brown colour comprises two or three ochre and umber pigments. The sunlit, white gable-end and chimney appear rubbed or scratched, giving an uneven effect.1 This was exaggerated in the subsequent mezzotint, where the wall appears patchy to indicate the overlap between different applications of whitewash by the workmen on the scaffolding. Turner may have intended an analogy between whitening the flat wall of a real building, the process of scratching through to the white paper in the drawing and the scraping or burnishing of the burr on the copper plate to achieve an equivalent area in the print; on one proof he noted: ‘The Whitewasht House cannot be too white or the linen upon the stall.’2 Rawlinson praised its juxtaposition and contrast with the similar shape of the castle wall above, and noted Turner’s addition in the engraving of white smoke from the chimney against the dark clouds.3

Verso:

Blank, save for inscriptions.

Inscribed in pencil ‘9’ [circled] and ‘21’ centre
Stamped in black ‘[crown] | N•G | CXVI – Y’ bottom left