Water in Turner’s YorkshireLet the rivers & waterfalls guide you... This is a Turner Trails downloadable guide. You can discover

more about Turner’s Yorkshire at www.yorkshire.com/turner.

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But Turner also chose water as a Yorkshire subject in its own right from the coast between the Humber and Whitby, to the waterfalls of the Dales. Please download the Turner’s Coastal Yorkshire podcast to listen to Turner expert David Hill and watercolour artist Ashley Jackson discuss Turner’s work of the Yorkshire coast.

Here, we’ll turn to Turner’s studies of freshwater subjects. He was particularly fond of waterfalls and visited at least eleven in Yorkshire, including Aysgarth Falls, Colby Fall, Cotter Force, Gordale Scar, Hardraw Force, Janet’s Foss, Mill Gill Force, Mossdale Falls, Thornton Force, West Burton Falls and Whitfield Gill Fall; some of them he even stopped at twice.

Water in Turner’s YorkshireTurner was usually found walking or riding along the banks of rivers and streams while searching for viewpoints to sketch from. Whether drawing castles, churches or historic houses, his vantage points are often looking along a nearby river towards his subject. Sometimes the water itself was his focus and rivers and waterfalls literally flow through many of Turner’s Yorkshire sketches and paintings. He included them to link the different elements of the landscape together and take the viewer’s eye from foreground to his subject in the background.

He approached one of his very first sketches in Yorkshire in exactly this way when he drew Rotherham Minster and Bridge from the River Don. Here water was periphery to the main subject yet essential to make the composition work by holding the different elements of the picture together in an aesthetic and pleasing way. If you’d like to find out more about how Turner included water in his sketches and paintings of castles, please see Castles in Turner’s Yorkshire.

Gordale Scar

Water, Water Everywhere

1816 was one of the wettest

summers on record. Turner

made one of his longer

Yorkshire tours during

this year of rains so his

encounters with water were

more than he bargained for.

He had to fight downpours

to sketch but this meant

Yorkshire’s swollen rivers and

surging waterfalls were at

their most spectacular.

Interesting Fact...

Mossdale Falls

Plumpton Rocks

Aysgarth Falls © Si Homfray

www.yorkshire.com/turner

High Mill

Rivers appear again and again in Turner’s sketches. He seems to have been particularly taken by three Yorkshire rivers, the Ure, Washburn and Wharfe, picking out particular features. He visited these rivers many times while staying with Fawkes at Farnley Hall in Wharfedale. The Ure is the river that flows through Aysgarth Falls and features in many of his other subjects such as Askrigg, Boroughbridge and Hackfall. The Washburn is the main focus of a watercolour with Dob Park Lodge on a hill in the distance. His subjects along the Wharfe range from the Strid, where the river narrows and the water rushes in great force, eroding softer rock to form a deep chasm, to High Mill at Addingham.

Turner would often clamber down the treacherous approaches to the falls to find the best viewpoints. At Aysgarth he worked his way down to the lowest and most impressive fall of the three while at Gordale he sketched at the foot of the fall that drops into the gorge. His watercolour of Hardraw looks up to the tallest waterfall in England from the bottom of the valley below, which was then almost devoid of trees. In Turner’s watercolour of Mossdale Falls, one of the remotest spots he visited in Yorkshire, Mossdale Beck cascades over rocks in a series of falls that carve a path down the north flank of Widdle Fell.

Turner was also keenly interested in the rocks the waterfalls tumbled over. He closely observed the geology, then a new science that he shared an interest in with his friend and patron Walter Fawkes of Farnley Hall. He accurately depicted the limestone strata at Aysgarth, Thornton and West Burton waterfalls. At Thornton he picked out the vertical slates while at West Burton he drew the way the limestone was knitted together by wavy horizontal joints that made the water fan out in a transparent veil.

www.yorkshire.com/turner

Ice Age LakeGlaciers created Malham Tarn over 10,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age. A retreating glacier left a long mound of rocks and stones in its wake so creating a dam. The tarn filled up to form the highest glacial lake in England.

Did you know?

Fishing for a ViewTurner not only liked water to sketch, he was also a keen angler. As he was often as happy fishing as he was drawing, perhaps this was why he chose so many viewpoints by rivers.

Interesting Fact...Mossdale Falls © Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge

Cotter Force

The view from the entrance of Dow Cave

West Burton Falls

Malham Cove

Turner also appreciated the way York is built along the Ouse and sketched two views of Ouse Bridge, one with the Minster in the background and the other with St William’s Chapel, which was demolished in 1809. You can also follow in Turner’s footsteps along the Ouse and around York with a podstroll self-guided trail you can download and look at on an iPod or smartphone.

Robin Hood’s FallKevin Costner appears at two Turner viewpoints in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Robin’s fight with Little John was filmed at Aysgarth Falls, while the waterfall where Maid Marian catches Robin bathing is Hardraw Force.

Did you know?

www.yorkshire.com/turner

Ouse Bridge Hardraw Force

Semer Water

The Strid

Hackfall

England’s Longest Waterfall

Hardraw Force is reputed

to be the longest single

drop waterfall in England.

Water pours down in one

continuous cascade over 100

foot or 30 metres high.

Interesting Fact...

Simmer Lake, near Askrigg © The Trustees of the British Museum

Turner’s remaining water subjects in Yorkshire are of a variety of places that inspired his imagination as he came across them during one of his many tours of the county. He visited Malham twice, first sketching the water-formed Malham Cove in 1808, then drawing Malham Tarn in 1816. On a guided trip underground into Dow Cave he made a series of animated sketches by candlelight to a backdrop of the underground streams. One of Turner’s finest watercolours is

a tranquil scene looking across Semer Water near Countersett.

Turner also found inspiration to sketch water subjects in two of Yorkshire’s landscape gardens. In 1797, the 1st Earl of Harewood commissioned Turner to produce two large oil paintings of Plumpton Rocks near Knaresborough. Both show the rocks mirrored in the lake at their base with two men and a rowing boat.

Turner visited Hackfall in 1816 when it was one of the finest and largest wild gardens in Britain. Purchased by John Aislabie, famous for his landscaping work at nearby Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal, whose son, William, used the River Ure to great effect to create a woodland garden in the 1750s full of springs, ponds and waterfalls. Turner characteristically found a viewpoint close to the river where he was able to look along the Ure to a folly called Mowbray Castle.

Turner’s Hackfall watercolour typifies how he was inspired by water. The river runs into the distance to draw the eye into the picture and to the folly. The figure of a woman strolls beside the river towards the viewer. If one thing defines a Turner Yorkshire viewpoint, it is this presence of water.

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Leyburn

Richmond

Hawes Bedale

Northallerton

York

WetherbyTadcaster

Thirsk

Ripon

Grimsby

Harrogate

Yorkshire Dales

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A6126123326Rotherham

Sheffield

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Doncaster

Barnsley

West Burton Falls

Semer Water

Mossdale Falls Hardraw Force

Aysgarth FallsCotter Force

Hackfall

Boroughbridge

Plumpton RocksThe Strid

Dow Cave

Malham Cove

Malham Tarn

Gordale Scar

Thornton Force

Ouse BridgeDob Park LodgeHigh Mill, Addingham

Leyburn Market Place

Askrigg

Boroughbridge

Dob Park Lodge

Askrigg

Devil’s ThrowThe legendary Carlow Stone at the north end of Semer Water appears in the foreground of Turner’s watercolour of the lake. It supposedly landed here when the Devil tried to throw it from Addlebrough to Crag End.

Interesting Fact...

Malham Tarn

This is a Turner Trails downloadable guide. You can discover more about Turner’s Yorkshire at www.yorkshire.com/turner.

Visiting Turner’s Yorkshire Watery PlacesCheck the Turner Trails website for information on directions, opening hours and further details for each. You can click on the following links to go straight to the web page.

Askrigg (for Colby Fall, Mill Gill and Whitfield Gill) , Aysgarth Falls, Boroughbridge, Cotter Force, Dob Park Lodge, Dow Cave, Gordale Scar/Janet’s Foss, Hackfall, Hardraw Force, High Mill, Malham Cove, Malham Tarn, Mossdale Falls, Ouse Bridge, Plumpton Rocks, Semer Water, The Strid, Thornton Force and West Burton Falls.

You can find Turner Trails benches at the following watery places – Askrigg, Aysgarth Falls, Boroughbridge, Dob Park Lodge, Hackfall, Hardraw Force, High Mill, Mossdale Falls, Plumpton Rocks, Semer Water, The Strid, West Burton Falls.

There are panels giving more details of Turner’s interest in watery places at or near Aysgarth Falls, Boroughbridge, Cotter Force, Dow Cave/Kettlewell, Plumpton Rocks, The Strid and Thornton Force.