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

Although Hopetoun House itself is not shown in these sketches (which continue on folio 44; D13535), Turner’s inscription ‘Stormy Eff at Hopetoun’ tells us that these sketches were made near the grand eighteenth-century mansion. The stormy effects are shown in a small sketch at the bottom of the two pages where large ‘red clouds’ hover in the ‘yellow sky’ above a ‘light’ ‘sea’.

The stretch of coastline shown here may be the same as that in the main sketch across folios 42 verso and 43 (D13532 and D13533). Turner also refers on folio 44 to the ‘Sea Road’ that must be nearby. This view has been identified as looking west towards Blackness Castle (just visible at the end of the headland on the left) from the coast between Port Edgar and Hopetoun. The buildings sketched above can be seen in the foreground of a sketch on 42 verso–43. As David Wallace-Hadrill has identified there is also a view of the Firth of ‘Forth looking E[east towards] Inchgarvie’ and the north shore across the top of the present two pages.1 A similar view of the subject appears on folio 42 (D13531).