Engraving from Whitaker's 'History of Richmondshire'
Print
1822 (engraved)
1822 (engraved)
| Artist/Maker | |
| Place of origin |
Line engraving on copper, printed on paper, depicting Mossdale Falls in the Yorkshire Dales
Object details
| Category | |
| Object type | |
| Titles |
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| Materials and techniques | Line engraving on copper |
| Brief description | Engraving by S. Middiman entitled 'Moss Dale Fall', after a drawing by J. M. W. Turner to illustrate Thomas Dunham Whitaker's book 'An history of Richmondshire, in the North riding of the county of York : together with those parts of the Everwicschire of Domesday which form the wapentakes of Lonsdale, Ewecross, and Westmoreland'. Great Britain, 1822. |
| Physical description | Line engraving on copper, printed on paper, depicting Mossdale Falls in the Yorkshire Dales |
| Credit line | Bequeathed by Horace Mummery |
| Subjects depicted | |
| Places depicted | |
| Bibliographic reference | Mossdale Falls was one of the most remote sites visited by J. M. W. Turner as part of his 1816 tour of the region. It is now a little-known complex of falls at the very head of Wensleydale. Mossdale Beck tumbles down a number of falls on the north flank of Widdale Fell.
1816 was one of the wettest summers on meteorological record and the falls must have been particularly impressive when Turner saw them. While in Turner's imagination the falls have taken on a grandeur perhaps more appropriate to the Alps than the Pennines, this was (and still is) remote and dramatic ground.
He made several sketches at this site, but it was the upper falls that attracted him in particular. He later painted a watercolour entitled 'Mossdale Fall', now in The Fitzwilliam Museum collection in Cambridge (Wilton number: 572).
The location remains remarkably unchanged today albeit for a railway viaduct (now disused) which was built across the top of the falls during the 1870s. There is a public footpath named after Turner highlighting some of the most remote sites he visited in this part of the Yorkshire Dales. |
| Other number | R181 - Rawlinson number (Mummery Bequest) |
| Collection | |
| Accession number | E.2805-1946 |
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| Record created | June 30, 2009 |
| Record URL |
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