Watercolours made by Turner c.1816-21, and engraved for Thomas Whitaker's History of Richmondshire, 1819-23 ( Wilton 559-581).
Little is known in detail about Turner 's connection with Dr Thomas Dunham Whitaker (1759-1821), who became Vicar of Whalley in 1809, and who was Rector of Heysham, Lancashire, from 1813 to 1819. An antiquarian and historian, Whitaker produced a history of the Abbey of Whalley in 1801, for which Turner made drawings of ancient seals and crosses. A second commission followed some fifteen years later, for 120 illustrations to a projected seven-volume History of Yorkshire. In the event, only twenty watercolours were made before Whitaker's death, and engraved for the one part issued, between 1819 and 1823, as The History of Richmondshire.
Ruskin knew and described the series initially from the engravings, but came to own eight of the watercolours, including Aysgarth Force ( Wilton 570), bought in February 1847, and Heysham and Cumberland Mountains ( Wilton 579), acquired in 1852. The latter was among the drawings included by Ruskin in the Turner exhibition he arranged at the Fine Art Society in 1878: a 'lovely drawing... [showing] the state of Turner's mind in its first perfect grasp of English scenery, entering into all its humblest details with intense affection' ( Works, 13.429). In being unable to date what he called 'the Yorkshire series,' Ruskin seems not to have known of the publication as it had appeared, but this did not diminish the pleasure he derived from their characteristics. In comparing them with the designs for Hakewill's Picturesque Tour in Italy, of similar date, he found 'the foliage more free, rich and marvellous in composition; the effects of mist more varied and true, the rock and hill drawing insuperable; the skies exquisite in complex form, his first and most intense cloud painting' ( Works, 13.429).