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

This page contains sketches of the mountains seen from Loch Achray, as well as a smaller sketch of a churchyard on the island of Islay.1

At the top of the page is a sketch of Ben Venue as seen from the western end of Loch Achray. The Pass of Achray, which leads through the heavily wooded Trossachs to Loch Katrine, is situated before it. There is a similar view on folio 25 verso (D26485). Beneath this is another sketch made from the same place, this time of Ben A’an which lies just over a mile to the north. Beyond lower hills and woodland the peak is recognisable by its distinctively shaped point on the larger (but less well known) Meall Gainmheich mountain. See folio 49 (D26532) for more information and references to further views made at the west end of Loch Achray.

At the right of the page, with the sketchbook turned to the left, is a small and rough sketch inscribed ‘churchyard Islay’. David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan have been unable to identify the location of this rather undistinguished sketch,2 but a depiction of a churchyard on folio 86 verso (D26606) has been identified as Keills near Port Askaig,3 making this a possible location for the present drawing. Two mountain peaks at the left of the sketch may therefore be the Paps of Jura, with the body of water in the middle distance being the Sound of Jura.