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

This is the left part of a double-page spread continued to the right on D12010; Turner Bequest CLIII 10, opposite, and further right on D12011; Turner Bequest CLIII 11, following, recording the view from Caley Crags west along Otley Chevin, with the Cow and Calf Rocks above Ilkley in the far right distance. D12010 served as the basis of a finished watercolour, Deer Shooting at Caley Crags (on the London art market in 2000),1 painted for Walter Fawkes of Farnley Hall about 1818. The sketch is not numbered in the manner of some previous sketches in the sketchbook, but it nevertheless presumably relates to no.5 in the list on an earlier page (D11996; Turner Bequest CLIII 1): ‘5 Deer below’. The present writer has suggested that Walter Fawkes might have made the note when commissioning the finished watercolour, but in this instance Turner developed the theme in his own way, introducing instead a shot deer into the foreground together with the instruments of its demise, a rifle and a shooting-bag. The finished watercolour is cited as ‘22 Rocks West’ in the list of watercolours in hand (or intended) on another page of this sketchbook (D12013; Turner Bequest CLIII 11a).