Joseph Mallord William TurnerGuards at the Provost's Banquet, Edinburgh 1822

Finberg associated this sketch with Turner’s watercolour of the Funeral of Sir Thomas Lawrence: A Sketch from Memory, exhibited 1830 (Tate D25467; Turner Bequest CCLXIII 344),1 a suggestion that was followed by Joseph Golding.2 It is perhaps more likely, however, that it was made as part of a group of about half a dozen sketches on small pieces of buff coloured card at the Provost’s Banquet given for King George IV on 24 August 1822 at Parliament House in Edinburgh.

Although the statue at the centre of the sketch does bear a slight resemblance to the statue of Queen Anne outside St Paul’s Cathedral, as seen in the Thomas Lawrence watercolour, there are no soldiers or guards in that painting. There are, however, figures of this type in other sketches associated with the banquet (Tate D34942 and D34946; Turner Bequest CCCLXIV d 442, 446) and in Turner’s oil painting of the occasion: George IV at the Provost’s Banquet in the Parliament House, Edinburgh, circa 1822 (Tate N02858).3 This group may be waiting to process into the Great Hall from the north end where Robert Mudie noted there ‘stood the colossal statue of Lord Melville [Henry Dundas], executed by [Frances Leggat] Chantry [sic].’4

This group of guards are depicted again on D34942, where the railing around Chantrey’s statue appears again.

For more information about Turner’s 1822 trip to Edinburgh see George IV’s Visit to Edinburgh 1822 Tour Introduction.

Verso:

Inscribed in red ink by John Ruskin ‘CCCXLIV <425> <427>’ bottom right
Inscribed in pencil by ?A.J. Finberg ‘440’ bottom right

Although the Turner Bequest group number of this work (CCCXLIV) has remained the same, the sheet number has changed twice. John Ruskin was the first to cross out his original red ink number (425) and replace it with a new one (427), before a subsequent cataloguer, probably A.J. Finberg, crossed that out and replaced it with a new number in pencil (440).