Celebrating 250 year of JMW Turner

JMW Turner’s Yorkshire in 10 special places

St George’s Day next 2025 marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Joseph Mallord William Turner, the son of a Covent Garden barber, who was described by art critic John Ruskin as ‘the greatest of the age’ and left a legacy of over 30,000 artworks.

He was a seasoned traveller who explored much of Europe, but there were two places that held a special place in his heart: Italy and Yorkshire. 

Perhaps it was his penchant for drawing and painting outdoors that drew him back to the north of England time and again following his first visit in 1797. ‘God’s own county’ has more than its fair share of dramatic weather events, sublime landscapes, and romantic ruins to keep any artist supplied with fresh material, and here he could indulge his passion for capturing every kind of weather at various times of the day. 

He roamed the length and breadth of the county, sometimes covering 25 miles a day on horseback (but not by cart – it was for good reason that his close friend and patron Walter Fawkes of Farnley Hall bestowed on him the nickname ‘Over-Turner’!).  Spot a monastic ruin or compelling landscape as you journey around Yorkshire yourself, and you’ll probably discover that Turner captured the scene in a painting or sketch!  He was particularly fond of the Yorkshire Dales, and I’ve selected 10 locations that I think capture the essence of Turner’s love affair with the area and form a 155-mile circular drive around the Dales.

1. The Chevin is an escarpment above Otley. Looking to the north from here, you can see Farnley Hall, Turner’s regular retreat between 1808 and 1824 – on occasion he stayed for two months at a time.  Life at Farnley brought out the very best in him, as described by an early biographer, George Walter Thornbury: “he shot and fished and was as merry and playful as a child.”  Turner relished the magnificent views over Wharfedale from the terrace at Farnley Hall, and it was a storm rolling and sweeping across The Chevin (the escarpment above Otley) which inspired the turbulent skies in his famous epic painting Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps. 
2. Bolton Priory:  JMW Turner’s Bolton Abbey shows the ruins of the Augustinian priory abandoned in 1540 and left to fall into disrepair.  Today the painting is in the Walker Art Gallery’s permanent collection in Liverpool.
3. Skipton Castle: when you visit, make your way round to the ‘back’ of the castle, as Turner did, to see the northern defences towering above the river valley of the Eller Beck.
4. Malham Cove: truly one of the wonders of Yorkshire, where you often see binoculars trained on peregrine falcons soaring above the spectacular limestone amphitheatre. 
5. Kirkby Lonsdale: today motorcyclists flock to the town to enjoy the sizzling bacon butties that the famous Devil’s Bridge Snacks has been serving since 1955, but Turner was there first, and also painted a very famous view of the valley of the River Lune, described by Victorian John Ruskin as, “one of the loveliest in England, therefore in the world.”

Water features heavily in the Yorkshire Dales, and was a source of never-ending fascination for Turner – the rivers are often in spate, and there are abundant waterfalls, some of which are dramatic single drops, such as

• Hardraw Force (the highest unbroken waterfall in England), and others like
• Aysgarth Falls, which is a series of three stepped falls.  Between the two, near the village of Bainbridge, is
• Semer Water, the largest of the few natural lakes in Yorkshire.
• Richmond: besides being the greatest landscape painter of his time, Turner documented social change at a time when industry was just beginning to make an impact on the English countryside.  This is nowhere more apparent than in his paintings and sketches of Richmond, recently named the best market town in the UK by The Times newspaper.
• Fountains Abbey: water is also in the foreground of The Dormitory and Transept of Fountains Abbey – Evening, which he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1798, and can be seen at York Art Gallery today.

My blog has been inspired in part by Prof. David Hill’s excellent book In Turner’s Footsteps through the hills and dales of Northern England, from which I quote: “This is not by any means the most obvious view of Fountains Abbey and … one is forced to wonder what took him to this damp, overgrown, irrelevant corner of the ruins in the first place …  It seems likely that his interest was more piscatorial than picturesque, for even today, there are some fine trout in the stream here… We can imagine him casting a line in the evening after finishing his sketches in the afternoon.  The sunlight streaming through the windows impressed him enough to set down his rod for a minute and pick up his sketchbook and colours and make a watercolour record of the effect.”

For me, this quote really brings Turner to life.  The experience of fishing in the River Skell at Fountains Abbey inspired this particular painting, and the ten special places that I have selected in the Yorkshire Dales represent just a few of the many places of beauty in Yorkshire that excited him and appealed to his imagination – he clearly had a soft spot for ‘God’s Own Country’.

Aticle contributed by Tess Pike: https://yorkshiresbestguides.co.uk/project/tess-pike/