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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Scotland 1801-10 > Helmsley Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner View over the Bend of a River, with Distant Hills: ?The Tees with the Cleveland Hills 1801

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘View over the Bend of a River, with Distant Hills: ?The Tees with the Cleveland Hills’ 1801
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 14 Recto:
View over the Bend of a River, with Distant Hills: ?The Tees with the Cleveland Hills 1801
D02480
Turner Bequest LIII 14
Pencil and watercolour on white wove paper, 112 x 162 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘14’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘LIII – 14’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Made with the page turned horizontally, this view is presumably somewhere on Turner’s route between Whitby and Durham, seen of earlier and later pages respectively. The broad sandflats in the left foreground may indicate a point near the mouth of the Tees, looking south towards the Cleveland Hills. Gerald Wilkinson detected snow on these hills, and was inclined to allot the book to a different, spring tour;1 but snow is not apparent to this compiler, and the drawing seems to show a summer view, with trees in full leaf in the foreground.
For other watercolour studies in this sketchbook, see under folio 5 recto (D02468).

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

1
See Wilkinson 1972, p.109.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘View over the Bend of a River, with Distant Hills: ?The Tees with the Cleveland Hills 1801 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-view-over-the-bend-of-a-river-with-distant-hills-the-tees-r1178502, accessed 17 July 2024.