Turner's Water-Colours at Farnley Hall

TEXT BY ALEX. J. FINBERG “THE STUDIO,” LTD., LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK
TURNER’S PERSONAL RELATIONS WITH MR. W. FAWKE
T is not known for certain exactly when or how Turner became acquainted with Mr. Walter Ramsden Hawksworth Fawkes of Farnley Hall. Several biographers say that Turner first met Mr. Fawkes about 1802, when the artist was in Yorkshire making drawings for one of the series of topographical works dealing with parts of Yorkshire which Dr. Whitaker, the vicar of Whalley, prepared and published. But Whitaker’s “History of the Parish of Whalley,” which was published about this date, contains no reference to Farnley, and deals with a part of Yorkshire and Lancashire at some distance from Farnley. The only book of Dr. Whitaker which contains any illustrations connected with Farnley Hall is the “Loidis and Elmete,” published in 1816, and we know that Turner had become intimate with Mr. Fawkes some years before this date.
The first certain piece of evidence connecting Mr. Fawkes with Turner is contained in some of the sketch-books used by the artist during his first tour in Switzerland in the year 1802. Mr. Fawkes’s name is not mentioned in full, but a capital “F” is written in ink on the margin or back of several of the drawings. I take this to mean that a patron whose name began with “F” had looked through Turner’s sketch-books at some time after his return to London, and had selected certain subjects to be carried out from sketches thus marked. That this patron was Mr. Fawkes is established by the drawing made at Chamounix, which is inscribed in Turner’s handwriting “ Mer de Glace, avec le Cabin de Blair ” (page 22 of the “St. Gothard and Mont Blanc” Sketch-Book in the National Gallery). The finished water-colour now in the Farnley Hall Collection, entitled Blair’s Hut on the Montanvert and Mer de Glace , is simply an amplification of this sketch. Other subjects in these sketch-books which Turner carried out for Mr. Fawkes are Bonneville , Sallanches , The Falls of the Reichenbach , The Valley of Chamounix , The Fall of the Staubbach , The Lake of Lucerne from Flüelen , The Lake of Brienz with the Ruins of the Castle of Ringgenberg , and Grenoble .