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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Cheshire, Derbyshire, North Wales ... > Tabley No.1 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The River Calder, Whalley Bridge and Village 1808

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The River Calder, Whalley Bridge and Village’ 1808
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 15 Recto:
The River Calder, Whalley Bridge and Village 1808
D06835
Turner Bequest CIII 6
Pencil on off-white wove paper, 226 x 295 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink and by another hand in black ink ‘6’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CIII 6’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This subject continues to the right on a strip of folio 16 (D06836; Turner Bequest CIII 7). For Turner’s visit to Whalley in 1808 and his drawings of the bridge over the River Calder and the ruins of Whalley Abbey, see Introduction to the sketchbook. In his 1910 book, Finberg compared this drawing with another in the sketchbook, now folio 18 (D06837; Turner Bequest CIII 8), concluding that while it was the better of the two as ‘a representation of the actual place’, it was ‘just this topographical and objective adequacy which constituted the defect of this fine drawing from Turner’s point of view’.1 For this reason, Finberg believed, Turner chose the other as the basis for his picture Whalley Bridge and Abbey, Lancashire: Dyers Washing and Drying Cloth (private collection)2 exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1811.
1
Finberg 1910, p.63.
2
Butlin and Joll 1984, pp.83–4 no.117 (pl.124).
Verso:
Blank. Inscribed by Ruskin ‘161’.

David Blayney Brown
May 2010

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘The River Calder, Whalley Bridge and Village 1808 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2010, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-river-calder-whalley-bridge-and-village-r1134480, accessed 03 July 2024.