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Lot Essay
The extensive series of around fifty watercolours Turner made in and around Farnley Hall for Walter Fawkes (1769-1825) is a testament to their warm friendship and the immense pleasure the artist felt during his frequent stays at this Yorkshire country house near Otley, to the north of Leeds. As Walter Thornbury, one of Turner’s first biographers, noted, ‘At Farnley he delighted to be; there he shot and fished, and was as merry and playful as a child’ (1861⁄2, II, p.85). The art critic John Ruskin, who visited Farnley in 1851, and was able to see the full splendour of the complete Turner collection, pronounced that ‘of all his drawings, I think those of Yorkshire scenes have the most heart in them. Farnley Hall [was] a place where a great genius was loved and appreciated, who did all his best work for that place.’ Turner’s visits to Farnley span the years between 1808 and 1824; but once Fawkes died in the following year he found the idea of returning there too painful.
It was surely Turner’s enthusiasm for angling that first took him to the neighbouring valley of the Washburn, a tributary of the River Wharfe, which was afterwards flooded and made into the Lindley Wood Reservoir in the early 1870s. Two of his earliest depictions of the river’s brownish waters include his fishing competitors: one features a heron; the second a kingfisher; both perched on rocks midstream, waiting patiently for the moment to strike on unwitting fish (British Museum, London and Yale Center for British Art, New Haven; Wilton 538 and 540).
This watercolour is one of two that focus on the river banks below Lindley Hall, another property on Fawkes’s estate to the north-east of Farnley Hall itself (see also Wilton 623; Private collection). The second watercolour is slightly larger and on buff or grey paper, and provides a much closer view of the bridge, with the hall precisely delineated against the hilltop horizon. That work has been related to sketches made on Turner’s last visit in 1824 (D.Hill in Turner in Yorkshire, York City Art Gallery 1980, p.47). However, this much more panoramic view of the Washburn valley seems likely to date from around 1815-8, at a time when Turner also painted many of the interior views of Farnley Hall. Both works show the view looking northwards, with the current moving towards us, something Turner was at pains to indicate in the flow of the water around the rocks in the bottom right corner. Another watercolour records the progress of the Washburn from the same spot when turning to face in the opposite direction (The Washburn with Leathley Church; Private collection; Wilton 627). Turner was fond of creating images that inter-linked (notably in the set of Rhine views that he produced for Fawkes in 1817), and A.J. Finberg was the first to observe that the viewpoint of the present watercolour was taken from the water mill in the foreground of the Leathley view (op.cit., 1912, pl. XVII, The Washburne, with Leathley Castle).
In the revised 1877 edition of his controversial 1861 biography Thornbury relays a tradition that Turner had gifted a watercolour to one of Fawkes’ servants, who also ran the village alehouse, as a means of settling his bill (one of several narratives that Thornbury, not very deftly, deployed to imply Turner’s partiality for alcohol). Some years later the lucky recipient’s son tried to buy the old hall-chair he had occupied at Farnley, proffering the watercolour as payment, thereby leading to its rediscovery. By 1902, in his catalogue of Turner watercolours, Sir Walter Armstrong casually associates the incident with this view of the Valley of the Washburn. However, his details are confused and imprecise; and despite the quaintness of the story of unpaid services being covered by a picture (a common one among art discoveries), it is perhaps best disregarded.
In any case, in 1890 the Valley of the Washburn was among the sixty or so watercolours sold at Christie’s by Ayscough Fawkes. Although it did not subsequently return to Farnley, as some of the 1890 sale items did, it was later acquired by other Fawkes descendants. By 1923 Colonel Lionel Fawkes and his wife, Lady Constance, had settled in Canada. During the later 1930s the Valley of the Washburn was displayed (together with another watercolour by the artist) at Vancouver Art Gallery, where it was cherished as a fine representative of Turner’s creativity.
We are grateful to Ian Warrell for his help in preparing this catalogue entry.
It was surely Turner’s enthusiasm for angling that first took him to the neighbouring valley of the Washburn, a tributary of the River Wharfe, which was afterwards flooded and made into the Lindley Wood Reservoir in the early 1870s. Two of his earliest depictions of the river’s brownish waters include his fishing competitors: one features a heron; the second a kingfisher; both perched on rocks midstream, waiting patiently for the moment to strike on unwitting fish (British Museum, London and Yale Center for British Art, New Haven; Wilton 538 and 540).
This watercolour is one of two that focus on the river banks below Lindley Hall, another property on Fawkes’s estate to the north-east of Farnley Hall itself (see also Wilton 623; Private collection). The second watercolour is slightly larger and on buff or grey paper, and provides a much closer view of the bridge, with the hall precisely delineated against the hilltop horizon. That work has been related to sketches made on Turner’s last visit in 1824 (D.Hill in Turner in Yorkshire, York City Art Gallery 1980, p.47). However, this much more panoramic view of the Washburn valley seems likely to date from around 1815-8, at a time when Turner also painted many of the interior views of Farnley Hall. Both works show the view looking northwards, with the current moving towards us, something Turner was at pains to indicate in the flow of the water around the rocks in the bottom right corner. Another watercolour records the progress of the Washburn from the same spot when turning to face in the opposite direction (The Washburn with Leathley Church; Private collection; Wilton 627). Turner was fond of creating images that inter-linked (notably in the set of Rhine views that he produced for Fawkes in 1817), and A.J. Finberg was the first to observe that the viewpoint of the present watercolour was taken from the water mill in the foreground of the Leathley view (op.cit., 1912, pl. XVII, The Washburne, with Leathley Castle).
In the revised 1877 edition of his controversial 1861 biography Thornbury relays a tradition that Turner had gifted a watercolour to one of Fawkes’ servants, who also ran the village alehouse, as a means of settling his bill (one of several narratives that Thornbury, not very deftly, deployed to imply Turner’s partiality for alcohol). Some years later the lucky recipient’s son tried to buy the old hall-chair he had occupied at Farnley, proffering the watercolour as payment, thereby leading to its rediscovery. By 1902, in his catalogue of Turner watercolours, Sir Walter Armstrong casually associates the incident with this view of the Valley of the Washburn. However, his details are confused and imprecise; and despite the quaintness of the story of unpaid services being covered by a picture (a common one among art discoveries), it is perhaps best disregarded.
In any case, in 1890 the Valley of the Washburn was among the sixty or so watercolours sold at Christie’s by Ayscough Fawkes. Although it did not subsequently return to Farnley, as some of the 1890 sale items did, it was later acquired by other Fawkes descendants. By 1923 Colonel Lionel Fawkes and his wife, Lady Constance, had settled in Canada. During the later 1930s the Valley of the Washburn was displayed (together with another watercolour by the artist) at Vancouver Art Gallery, where it was cherished as a fine representative of Turner’s creativity.
We are grateful to Ian Warrell for his help in preparing this catalogue entry.