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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Scotland 1831 > Rokeby and Appleby Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Johnny Armstrong's Tower 1831

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Johnny Armstrong's Tower’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 45 Verso:
Johnny Armstrong’s Tower 1831
D25612
Turner Bequest CCLXIV 45a
Pencil on white wove paper, 74 x 94 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This view of Johnny Armstrong’s Tower, made with the sketchbook inverted, is from the south and shows the valley of the River Esk to the right of the tower and, in the distance, the mountains of Esk Dale beyond Langholm. This view is not dissimilar to the one that Turner chose for his illustration to Scott’s Poetic Works: Johnnie Armstong’s Tower circa 1832 (watercolour, Taft Museum, Cincinnati).1 There are sketches of the peel tower on folio 43 (D25607).

Thomas Ardill
September 2009

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.427 no.1073.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Johnny Armstrong’s Tower 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2009, 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-johnny-armstrongs-tower-r1133972, accessed 27 April 2024.