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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Scotland 1831 > Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Carlisle 1831

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Carlisle’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 45 Recto:
Carlisle 1831
D25849
Turner Bequest CCLXVI 45
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 187 mm
Inscribed in blue ink by John Ruskin ‘45’ bottom left inverted and ‘342’ top left inverted
Stamped in black ‘CCLXVI 45’ top left inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sketchbook inverted are two sketches of Carlisle. The main sketch, continuing on folio 44 verso (D25848), is of Carlisle from the north, probably from Eden Bridge. The River Eden runs in the foreground of the picture with Carlisle Castle and Cathedral above it. These are Turner’s most detailed depictions of the castle and cathedral in the sketchbook, and helped to inform his frontispiece design for volume 1 of Scott’s Poetical Works: Carlisle circa 1832 (watercolour, Yale Center for British Art);1 see folios 43 verso–44 (D25846–D25847). At the top of the page is a small sketch of the Eden Bridge.
A similar depiction of the castle, though with none of the surrounding landscape, exists in the Rokeby and Appleby sketchbook (Tate D25555; Turner Bequest CCLXIV 16). For further sketches of Carlisle in the present sketchbook see folio 39 verso (D25838).

Thomas Ardill
September 2009

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.427 no.1070.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Carlisle 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-carlisle-r1134216, accessed 22 September 2024.