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 > Scotch Antiquities Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Dunbar Castle 1818

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Dunbar Castle’ 1818
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 31 Recto:
Dunbar Castle 1818
D13634
Turner Bequest CLXVII 30
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 186 mm
Inscribed in blue ink ‘30’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CLXVII 30’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Continued from folio 30 verso (D13633; CLXVII 29a), this sketch of Dunbar Castle from the east was used as the basis for Turner’s watercolour design of Dunbar, circa 1823 (private collection) 1 for the Provincial Antiquities. This part of the picture shows the northern half of the promontory on which the ruins sit, with the old castle gate at the left with the keep in the centre and the promontory falling away into the sea at the right.
There is a pale pink smudge next to Finberg’s number, the remains of Ruskin’s red ink numbering.

Thomas Ardill
March 2008

1
Wilton 1979, p.426 no.1066.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Dunbar Castle 1818 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2008, 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-dunbar-castle-r1132182, accessed 18 April 2024.