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

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

Joseph Mallord William Turner Old Kilpatrick Church, Near Bowling, West Dunbartonshire 1831

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Old Kilpatrick Church, Near Bowling, West Dunbartonshire’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 6 Verso:
Old Kilpatrick Church, Near Bowling, West Dunbartonshire 1831
D26630
Turner Bequest CCLXXI 6a
Pencil on off-white laid writing paper, 45 x 158 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Bowl’ bottom left
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXI – 6a’ right running vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner has fitted two sketches into the available space of this page stub, suggesting that it must have been ripped before he drew on it. The left sketch, and another on folio 7 (D26631), are labelled ‘Bowl’ (rather than ‘boat’ as Finberg read it), which stands for Bowling, a village on the banks of the River Clyde on the western outskirts of Glasgow; although the sketch on this page is actually of the nearby village of Old Kilpatrick. David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan have identified the church in both sketches as Old Kilpatrick Church, and have suggested that the two views must have been made, either from the Clyde Canal, or the River Clyde to the south-west; the right-hand sketch was made as Turner’s boat moved west towards Bowling.1 Behind the church are the Kilpatrick Hills.
Turner seems to have reached Dumbarton by steamboat, either from Glasgow, or from the Clyde Canal. Either way he would have passed Kilpatrick and Bowling by water.2 (See folio 7 for two further sketches of the church).

Thomas Ardill
October 2009

1
David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan, ‘Turner Round the Clyde and in Islay – 1831’, 1991, Tate catalogue files, folio 1.
2
Ibid., folio 2.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Old Kilpatrick Church, Near Bowling, West Dunbartonshire 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 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-old-kilpatrick-church-near-bowling-west-dunbartonshire-r1135067, accessed 23 April 2024.