Joseph Turner's Artistic Tour of Yorkshire
Following in the Dales Footsteps of England's Greatest Artist
Oct 23, 2008
Joseph Mallord William Turner has been acclaimed Britain's greatest painter, and he loved travelling north to Yorkshire, where the wild unspoilt dales, moors and peaks provided natural inspiration for his Impressionist style of art.
Turner's First Encounters with Yorkshire
Turner first visited Yorkshire in 1797, at the age of twenty-two; he was already an accomplished painter, and made his name by escaping the studio to paint his impressions of nature and reality. His excursions in the English county became more frequent after he befriended Otley landowner and Member of Parliament, Walter Ramsden Fawkes, and received a commission to paint the county in the early nineteenth century.
One of Turner's most famous paintings, Hannibal Crossing the Alps, was said to have been inspired by a storm that passed over him when he was walking upon Otley Chevin; a 925-foot ridge overlooking the market town. Walter Fawkes' son, Hawkesworth, reported that Turner became animated as the rain lashed down on them, and the artist hastily sketched his thoughts onto an old envelope.
Turner Ventured North of Otley to the Land of Wallace and Gromit
Turner also travelled north of Otley on his quest to paint Yorkshire; travelling from Wharfedale to Wensleydale, where nearly two centuries later Nick Park and Aardman Studios would make the area famous through Wallace’s love for its cheese in the animated Wallace and Gromit movies.
The dairy where the actual Wensleydale cheese is produced is on the edge of the quaint market town of Hawes; the unofficial capital of upper Wensleydale.
Travelling the Settle to Carlisle Railway Line from Leeds to Hawes
The most convenient public transport from Leeds, the biggest city in Yorkshire, to Hawes is on a section of what is arguably England’s most scenic rail journey: the Settle to Carlisle line. Soon after passing through Settle you reach Three Peaks country, deep in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, with the three 2000 feet plus mountains of Ingleborough, Pen-y-Ghent and Whernside coming into view one by one; Turner painted the former for the Yorkshire series.
Turner must have been in his element amongst the natural light and majestic nature within the Peaks, where the emergence of the sun can turn a gloomy day into a magical one within minutes, as fields are transformed from olive to lime green, and life awakens under the welcome rays and warmth.
As you descend from mist-shrouded peaks to sunlit dales under such circumstances it can evoke the scenes at the end of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, when the hobbits return to the bright grassy shire from the bogs and rocks they’d traversed on the way to Mordor.
At the heart of the peaks is the village of Horton-in-Ribblesdale, and thousands of hikers clock on there before starting the twenty-four miles hike up and around all three peaks. Leaving the station, which has an award winning information section about the railway line, heading north the train soon crosses the twenty-four arches of the iconic Ribblehead Viaduct.
The Green Dragon and Scenery From Kevin Costner's Robin Hood Movie
After getting dropped off in Hawes it is another short bus ride or an hour’s walk to the Green Dragon Inn, which has been present in its current location for seven centuries.
The Inn is proud to declare that Turner once slept under its roof; stating that J.M.W. Turner ‘Britain`s greatest watercolor artist, Father of Impressionism, stayed here for three days completing four drawing of Mossdale Head, and two sketches of Hardraw Force: one of which he “worked up” into the finished painting now hanging at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.’
Hardraw Force, which at ninety feet is England’s highest unbroken waterfall, provided one of the locations for the Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves movie.
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