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 Langholm 1831

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Langholm’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 63 Recto:
Langholm 1831
D25885
Turner Bequest CCLXVI 63
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 187 mm
Inscribed in blue ink by John Ruskin ‘63’ bottom left inverted and ‘342’ top left inverted
Stamped in black ‘CCLXVI 63’ top left inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sketchbook inverted is a drawing of Langholm, with the Town Hall and Langholm Bridge from the west bank of the River Esk. Turner is known to have visited Langholm on 2 August as he wrote a letter to Robert Cadell that day to tell the publisher when he was planning to arrive at Abbotsford, the home of Sir Walter Scott.1 Turner arrived from Lockerbie by way of Johnny Armstrong’s Tower, which is situated about four miles along the River Esk to the south. The next day he coached on to Hawick.
There is another view of Langholm on folio 67 verso (D25894) which again shows the Town Hall and Bridge, as well as the old Parish Church.

Thomas Ardill
September 2009

1
Robert Cadell, ‘Abbotsford Diary’, Thursday 4 August 1831, National Library of Scotland, MS Acc.5188, Box 1, folio 102; transcribed in Gerald E. Finley, ‘J.M.W. Turner and Sir Walter Scott: Iconography of a Tour’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol.31, 1972, p.377.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Langholm 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-langholm-r1134252, accessed 25 April 2024.