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

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

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Cuillins at the Head of Loch Scavaig from the South 1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Cuillins at the Head of Loch Scavaig from the South’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 78 Verso:
The Cuillins at the Head of Loch Scavaig from the South 1831
D26591
Turner Bequest CCLXX 78a
Pencil on white wove paper, 201 x 125 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Across this page and continued on folio 79 (D26592) are six sketches that have been identified as the head of Loch Skavaig on Skye, as seen from a boat to the south.1 Turner travelled up Loch Scavaig to reach Loch Coruisk by boat from Elgol, and returned the same way. There are sketches of Loch Scavaig scattered throughout this sketchbook (see folio 38; D26510), but the concentration of sketches on the present page indicates the extent of Turner’s interest in the subject of the Cuillin Mountains as seen from the water.
All six sketches, five running down the page and a sixth drawn down the left hand side, are of the same view, and show the southern end of the Cuillins range with the entrance to Loch Coruisk at the centre bordered by Gars-bheinn at the left and Sgurr na Stri and the right. At the very right of the sketches is the mighty Bla Bheinn, seen most clearly in the second sketch from the top (on folio 79) where it is inscribed ‘B Bhen’, and in the sketch at the left of the present page where the outline is more carefully delineated.

Thomas Ardill
March 2010

1
David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan, ‘Turner on the Isle of Skye 1831’, [circa 1991], Tate catalogue files, [folio 17].

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘The Cuillins at the Head of Loch Scavaig from the South 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2010, 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-the-cuillins-at-the-head-of-loch-scavaig-from-the-south-r1135025, accessed 20 April 2024.