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

Across two pages, with the sketchbook inverted, Turner has made sketches and notes about highland dress. The notes are transcribed below.

Gerald Finley has connected that these sketches to the drawings on folios 44 verso–45 (D17580–D17581) of the Peers’ Ball, held at the Assembly Rooms on 23 August 1822. This event was also known as the Highland Ball, as Sir Walter Scott had advised men attending to wear ‘the ancient Highland costume’,1 and bonnets, tartan and shields are all shown.

Although this was perhaps the best occasion to see the mania for highland costume and custom, Turner would have had ample opportunity to see highlanders as well as city dwellers dressed in full Celtic regalia. Sir Walter Scott had written to the heads of all the Clans requesting them to send contingents to take part in the various royal pageants (‘Highlanders are what he [the King] will most want to see’)2 and several hundred arrived, wearing specially commissioned costumes, to be joined by members of the Celtic Society and other gentlemen fond of dressing up and the Romantic and historic associations of the once outlawed garb.3 Thanks to Scott and his Hints, the various newly established Highland Societies and an inevitable public sense of patriotism inspired by the historic occasion, tartan and the other highland trappings were the vogue during the King’s visit.4

While folio 54 is mainly given over to drawings of bonnets, shields, dirks, belts and other items of highland garb, with a few explanatory notes, the present page consists mainly of written notes with a few illustrations relating to them. Because of Turner’s difficult handwriting and inconsistent and idiosyncratic note-taking, some of the inscriptions remain obscure and it has not been possible to separate the many different stream-of-consciousness-style notes that are jumbled together on this page (see above). While his lengthy descriptions have not been disentangled, references to particular objects of interest are apparent, including material such as ‘white worsted’ and ‘tartan plaid’, items of clothing including a ‘kilt’, a ‘double ruff’, ‘slacks’, ‘shirt’ and ‘buttons’, and costume accessories such as a ‘sword’, perhaps a ‘scabbard’ and a ‘small gun’. On the opposite page, in addition to the drawings already mentioned, are references to a ‘dirk’ (dagger) and a ‘Deer Horn’ (either the handle of a knife or a powder horn).

The small, rough sketches on this page depict the following. At the top right a square with several lines beneath it may be a belt buckle as in folio 45. At the centre right is a highland bonnet (tam o’shanter) with a ruff beneath it. To the left is an obscure sketch that may perhaps depict a hat from behind with tassels handing down. At the bottom left is the top half of a figure wearing a wide bonnet and military jacket as seen from behind. The slight sketch to the right may be his shoulder belt. In the lower centre of the page is a drawing consisting of vertical lines which fan out from a base. This may represent the top of one of the pillars holding up the ceiling of the Supper Room extension to the Assembly Rooms which Turner depicted on folios 47 and 48. The lines radiating from the top of the pillar may be the ‘rose-coloured and white muslin’ strips that covered the ceiling.5