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

Turner took this view of Edinburgh Castle from the ‘Golf Ground’ to the south of the city. In this view the Esplanade (parade ground), can be clearly seen on the right of the castle, as can the large square-shaped New Barracks building, left of centre, and, at the highest point of the rock, the Great Hall.

Turner’s inscriptions refer to the ‘Golf Ground’, which stretches out in the foreground of the picture, and to the clothes that the golfers were wearing: ‘Black Hat | Red Jacket with Blue Cuffs...’. Martin A. Bryden, the club historian at Murrayfield golf club, has identified the golf course as Bruntsfield Links,1 which had been used by the Bruntsfield Links Golfing Society since 1761,2 and Neil Laird, another golf historian, has been able to identify the buildings in the foreground as, on the left, a side view of the Golf Hotel and, to the right, the Golf Tavern on Wright’s Houses. A painting of a similar view (though slightly to the left of this one) by J. Ewbank now hangs in the Bruntsfield Links clubhouse,3 and Paul Sandby had painted the same view with a Horse Fair on Bruntsfield Links, Edinburgh in 1750 (watercolour, National Gallery of Scotland).