Joseph Mallord William Turner Raby Castle and Park from the North 1817
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 21 Recto:
Raby Castle and Park from the North 1817
D12300
Turner Bequest CLVI 23a
Turner Bequest CLVI 23a
Pencil and watercolour on white wove paper, 232 x 291 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[...] to Raby’ bottom left
Inscribed in pencil ‘23, a’ top left, upside down
Stamped in black ‘CLVI 23A’ bottom right
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[...] to Raby’ bottom left
Inscribed in pencil ‘23, a’ top left, upside down
Stamped in black ‘CLVI 23A’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Exhibition history
1878
Oxford Loan Collection, University Galleries, Oxford 1878–1909 or later (91; renumbered 92b).
1974
Turner 1775–1851, Royal Academy, London, November 1974–March 1975 (202).
1983
J.M.W. Turner, à l’occasion du cinquantième anniversaire du British Council, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, October 1983–January 1984 (132, reproduced).
1987
Watercolours from the Turner Bequest, Tate Gallery, London, April–October 1987 (no catalogue).
1990
The Third Decade: Turner Watercolours 1810–1820, Tate Gallery, London, January–April 1990 (52, reproduced).
References
1904
E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn eds., Library Edition: The Works of John Ruskin: Volume XIII: Turner: The Harbours of England; Catalogues and Notes, London 1904, p.564 (Oxford loans catalogue, 1878) no.92[b], as ‘Raby’.
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.448, CLVI 23a, as ‘Raby Castle’.
1969
John Gage, Colour in Turner: Poetry and Truth, London 1969, pp.40, 111, 232 note 111, 250 note 189.
1974
Gerald Wilkinson, The Sketches of Turner, R.A. 1802–20: Genius of the Romantic, London 1974, reproduced p.168 (colour, cropped to drawing).
1977
Gerald Wilkinson, Turner Sketches 1789–1820, London 1977, reproduced p.144 (cropped to drawing).
1979
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.172 note 28.
1983
Andrew Wilton, in John Gage, Jerrold Ziff, Nicholas Alfrey and others, J.M.W. Turner, à l’occasion du cinquantième anniversaire du British Council, exhibition catalogue, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris 1983, pp.[208]–9 no.132, reproduced.
1984
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.101 under no.136.
1990
Diane Perkins, The Third Decade: Turner Watercolours 1810–1820, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1990, p.44 no.52, reproduced.
2002
David Blayney Brown, Turner in the Tate Collection, London 2002, reproduced pl.57 (colour).
The composition continues opposite on folio 20 verso (D12301; CLVI 24), where the castle itself appears. The overall view is similar to that on folios 19 recto, 18 recto and 17 verso (D12278, D12296, D12297; CLVI 11a, 21a–22), but from a lower elevation, slightly to the west. In the trees towards the bottom right are the castellated North Lodge gatehouses on the Bishop Auckland-Barnard Castle road, in line with the tower of St Mary’s Church, Staindrop to the south.
At about the centre of the original full width of the page (see technical note below) are tentative vertical pencil strokes towards the top and bottom edges, serving to frame the castle at the centre of the composition, as in the painting Raby Castle, the Seat of the Earl of Darlington, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1818 (Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore),1 where the overall composition is taken from folios 18 recto–17 verso.2
Technical notes:
As in the part of the panorama including the castle opposite, watercolour has been applied to the band of trees in the middle distance – whether on the spot or later is difficult to determine. The colours are soft tones of grey-green, yellow or ochre, and red or pink. The touches peter out towards the centre of the sheet, just beyond the trunk of the tree in the foreground. For a discussion of this use of colour, see the entry for D12301.
The drawing has been trimmed for mounting and display at the left without the use of a straight edge, the usual width of pages in this sketchbook being 328 mm. The rough blue arrow and vertical line half-way down the edge presumably indicates the limits of the composition exposed when mounted.
Matthew Imms
February 2010
How to cite
Matthew Imms, ‘Raby Castle and Park from the North 1817 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2010, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www