J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

This page has two sketches of Dunbar: one slight sketch of the crags off the coast at the bottom of the page inscribed ‘Dunbar’, and another sketch, drawn with the book inverted, of the ruins of Dunbar Castle and the rocks on which it stands going out to sea. Both are slight sketches with no more than rough outlines, and no details or shading. A succession of such sketches would have helped Turner to build up a mental map of an area, as well as providing examples of a subject from different viewpoints, helping him to remember and reconstruct a subject back in the studio.