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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Tour of Yorkshire 1816 > Yorkshire 1 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Ouse Bridge, York, from the Guildhall Water Gate 1816

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Ouse Bridge, York, from the Guildhall Water Gate’ 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 15 Verso:
Ouse Bridge, York, from the Guildhall Water Gate 1816
D10896
Turner Bequest CXLIV 15a
Pencil on white wove paper, 154 x 97 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is the left half of a double-page spread continued to the right on folio 16 (D10897), opposite, recording the view of the Ouse Bridge, York, from the left bank, upstream, outside the Water Gate of the Guildhall. To the left two figures are bringing materials, possibly barrels, to the quayside.
The Ouse Bridge recorded here was built in the twelfth century to replace a wooden structure and acquired its large central span in the mid-sixteenth century. It was frequently recorded by artists,1 especially as it became dilapidated towards the end of the eighteenth century, and in 1816 work began on its replacement. Turner sketched it on his first visit to Yorkshire in 1797 (Tate D01071, D01074; Turner Bequest XXXV 69, 72) and returned to it in 1817 (Tate D12633; Turner Bequest CLIX 65a), shortly before it was taken down in 1818.

David Hill
January 2009

1
See Barbara Wilson and Frances Mee, ‘The Fairest Arch in England’, Old Ouse Bridge York, and its Buildings, the Pictorial Evidence, York Archaeological Trust, 2002.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Ouse Bridge, York, from the Guildhall Water Gate 1816 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2009, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-ouse-bridge-york-from-the-guildhall-water-gate-r1144083, accessed 24 November 2024.