In the 1797, J.M.W. Turner packed up two large leatherbound sketchbooks, pencils and watercolours and set off for the north of England. When he returned from the tour that he regarded as one of the most important of his career, Turner had completed more than 200 sketches - works that later became the basis of more than 50 major oil paintings and watercolours. For this illustrated book, David Hill has taken photographs of many of the actual sites Turner sketched on his northern tour. These photographs appear alongside reproductions of Turner's first sketches (many here published for the first time) and the finished works derived from them. The result is a look at the whole of Turner's creative process, from site to exhibited picture, and at the quality and intensity of the artist's experience. David Hill reconstructs in detail Turner's tour of 1797, which included sites in Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland, the Scottish borders, the Lake District, northern Lancashire and Lincolnshire. Hill contends that this trip to the more remote country of Britain provided Turner with memories of dales, wild coasts and mountains that shaped the whole of his future direction as a land-scape painter.