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 Views of the Firth of Forth from the River, With Alloa Old Kirk 1831

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Views of the Firth of Forth from the River, With Alloa Old Kirk’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 22 Verso:
Views of the Firth of Forth from the River, With Alloa Old Kirk 1831
D26662
Turner Bequest CCLXXI 22a
Pencil on off-white laid writing paper, 101 x 158 mm
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXI – 22a’ top left descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
On this page Turner continued recording the shorelines of the Firth of Forth as he travelled west upon it from Queensferry to Stirling (see inside back cover for details; D41132). David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan have suggested that the top sketch shows rain falling on the hills to the north, and indeed there is a heavy cloud over the right half of the sketch. Other weather observations can be made about sketches of the Forth on folios 21, 24 and the inside back cover (D26659, D26665, D41132).1 Wallace-Hadrill and Carolan have recognised the building on the second sketch as Alloa Old Kirk, the tower of which still stands. There is a third slight sketch of a shoreline at the very bottom of the page.

Thomas Ardill
October 2009

1
Dr David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan, ‘Turner’s Sketches North of Stirling’, Turner Studies: His Art and Epoch 1775–1851, Summer 1990 vol.10 no.1, p.15.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Views of the Firth of Forth from the River, With Alloa Old Kirk 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-views-of-the-firth-of-forth-from-the-river-with-alloa-old-r1135099, accessed 19 April 2024.