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THE PROPERTY OF A LADY

VIEW OF HAREWOOD CASTLE FROM THE SOUTH EAST

measurements note
42 by 58 cm., 16½ by 23 in.

oil on paper laid down on canvas

PROVENANCE

Probably commissioned by Edward, Viscount Lascelles;
A. Myers & Son by 1874;
Francis Beresford Wright, Aldercar Hall, Derbyshire, before 1879 and thence by descent;
Anon. sale, Phillips, 7th June 1988, lot 16 bt. Leger Galleries

EXHIBITED

Nottingham Castle, Midland Counties Art Museum, 1879, no.32 (lent by F.B. Wright);
London, Leger Galleries, British Painting, Harewood Castle from the South, May 1989;
Tate, Turner in the North of England, 22nd October 1996-9th February 1997, no.25

NOTE

Painted in 1797 this wonderful view of the Wharfe Valley in Yorkshire captures the majesty and the 'rough-hewn' beauty of northern scenery. It was painted at a time when an awareness of Britain's natural beauty was beginning to be explored, and appreciated, by a much wider audience.

Both Girtin and Turner made extensive tours of the north of England towards the end of the eighteenth century. Girtin had travelled to the North in 1766, shortly before Turner, and had completed an extensive tour of Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland, and the Scottish borders. Girtin's knowledge of the North would have been supplemented by his apprenticeship to Edward Dayes, one of the leading topographical painters of the age. Although great rivals, Turner and Girtin were also close friends, and Girtin would have showed Turner his watercolours and sketches, and inspired the young artist with a desire to see the "river pools of blue, and tender wilderness of glittering trees, and misty lights of evening on immeasurable hills" (John Ruskin, Modern Painters, Vol.V, Part IX, Chapter IX).

Turner had already explored the Thames Valley, Kent, the Isle of Wight, South Wales, and the Midlands, but in 1797 he followed in Girtin's footsteps and completed an extensive tour, which took in many of the greatest castles, abbeys and houses of the North. It was during this tour that Turner painted the present work, as well as a number of other views of Harewood Castle from both the south east and the south west. Turner would probably have stayed with Edward Lascelles, Earl of Harewood, at Harewood House in Yorkshire. However, it was Lord Harewood's eldest son, Edward, Viscount Lascelles, who was one of Turner's most important patrons. Lascelles had a passion for ceramics, and his London home was overflowing with fine china, but he also had an interest in pictures, and he assiduously collected the finest works over a twelve year span between 1796 and 1808. A catalogue of pictures at Harewood House, Hanover Square lists him as the owner of eleven pictures by Turner, nineteen by Thomas Girtin, and others by Sandby, Varley, Callcott, Hoppner, Cotes, and Vernet. One of his works by Turner was a watercolour of St Erasmus and Bishop Islip's Chapel, Westminster Abbey, a picture which had been exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1796, and which had cost Edward Lascelles three guineas.

In 1796 Turner was only twenty-two years old, and his early work was primarily as a draughtsman of architectural views in pencil or watercolour. However, this was all to change, and Turner's tour of the North has frequently been cited as a turning point in his career, when the rugged beauty of the north of England instilled in him a desire to be a landscape artist, and more than that, a landscape artist in oils. The present picture is a rare and vibrant example of his early landscape painting in oil. It is rather charming, however, that Turner's watercolour techniques remain so apparent, with the subtle build up of glazes in the background, and highlights of pink on the castle walls.

Harewood castle was a fourteenth-century tower house, for which Sir William Aldeburgh had been granted the right to crenellate in 1366. This castle inspired some of Turner's finest work on his tour of the North, and he made a series of eight sketches in his North of England sketchbook (see fig.1). More importantly, however, this picture illustrates Turner's instinctive ability to capture the grandeur and power of English landscape. The following year Turner exhibited at the Royal Academy a painting of Norham Castle, on the Tweed - Summer's Morning. Years later, Turner himself remarked that this picture "took", and from that day on he always had more commissions than he could fulfil. Behind this popular success of lay the sketches in pencil and oil of Harewood, and a love of the North.