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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Scotland 1818-20 > Bass Rock and Edinburgh Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Pease Bridge, Cockburnspath, Berwickshire 1818

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Pease Bridge, Cockburnspath, Berwickshire’ 1818
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 32 Verso:
Pease Bridge, Cockburnspath, Berwickshire 1818
D13378
Turner Bequest CLXV 32a
Pencil on white laid paper, 99 x 159 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Drawn with the book inverted this sketch may show the Pease Bridge in Cockburnspath about halfway between St Abbs and Dunbar, which Turner had sketched in 1801 (Tate D02722, D02723; Turner Bequest LIV 71a, 72;). The bridge, opened in 1786, was, at the time, the highest bridge in Europe at forty metres above the water below. It crosses the Pease Dean valley, and is now part of a walk known as the Sir Walter Scott Way. Turner may have passed the bridge on his journey to North Berwick. Just as in his 1801 sketches, Turner draws the structure and landscape with the utmost economy using just a few lines. There is another drawing of the bridge on the top of the following page (D13379; CLXV 33).

Thomas Ardill
October 2007

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Pease Bridge, Cockburnspath, Berwickshire 1818 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 2007, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-pease-bridge-cockburnspath-berwickshire-r1131920, accessed 25 April 2024.