Joseph Mallord William Turner Richmond from the West 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 22 Verso:
Richmond from the West 1816
D11540
Turner Bequest CXLVIII 11a
Turner Bequest CXLVIII 11a
Pencil on white wove paper, 173 x 260 mm
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Exhibition history
1879
University Galleries, Oxford, 1879 until at least 1909 (158).
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.426, CXLVIII 11a, as ‘View of Richmond from the Moors’.
1975
Malcolm Cormack, J.M.W. Turner, R.A. 1775–1851: A Catalogue of Drawings and Watercolours in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Cambridge 1975, pp.52–3, no.25.
1979
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.394, no.808.
1979
Eric Shanes, Turner’s Picturesque Views in England and Wales 1825–1838, London 1979, p.156.
1980
David Hill, Stanley Warburton, Mary Tussey and others, Turner in Yorkshire, exhibition catalogue, York City Art Gallery 1980, p.93, no.148.
1984
David Hill, In Turner’s Footsteps: Through the Hills and Dales of Northern England, London 1984, pp.31, 67, 127.
This is the left part of a double-page spread continued to the right on folio 23 recto (D11541; Turner Bequest CXLVIII 12, now bound opposite), recording a distant view of Richmond from the west, high above the left bank of the River Swale, looking downstream to the town with beyond it the plains of North Yorkshire stretching to the distant escarpment of the North Yorkshire Moors. The present writer has dated this sketch to Tuesday 30 July 1816; the direction of light on the castle keep indicates late afternoon. Here Turner was returning to a similar idea recorded in a quick sketch in the Yorkshire 2 sketchbook (Tate D11231; Turner Bequest CXLV 115a), taken from a more distant and southerly viewpoint on the opposite side of the river, probably as he first approached Richmond from Swaledale on the previous afternoon, Monday 29 July. The sketch formed the basis of a studio colour study (Tate D17204; Turner Bequest CXCVII N) and a finished watercolour of Richmond, Yorkshire (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge),1 presumably conceived for Thomas Dunham Whitaker’s proposed General History of the County of York (see sketchbook introduction) and perhaps painted about 1820. In the event, however, the watercolour was not used for the Yorkshire project and was published instead in 1827 in the later series, Picturesque Views in England and Wales.
Numbers inscribed on the recto (D11539; Turner Bequest CXLVIII 11) might relate to early exhibition or display of this sketch, but apparently not to display at Oxford since the number used there was different.
David Hill
May 2009
How to cite
David Hill, ‘Richmond from the West 1816 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2009, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2013, https://www