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

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

Joseph Mallord William Turner Carding Mill and the Cliffs at Gallanach with the Sound of Kerrera Near Oban 1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Carding Mill and the Cliffs at Gallanach with the Sound of Kerrera Near Oban’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 79 Recto:
Carding Mill and the Cliffs at Gallanach with the Sound of Kerrera Near Oban 1831
D26896
Turner Bequest CCLXXIII 79
Pencil on white wove paper, 116 x 186 mm
Inscribed in blue ink by John Ruskin ‘79’ top left running vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXIII 79’ top right running vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch from the north, inscribed ‘Rd’, shows the Gallanach Road that runs south along the shore from Oban. Beyond is the cliff face of Druim Mòr and the Sound of Kerrera with a steamboat. David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan have identified the building with the mill wheel by the water as Carding Mill, making the bay in the foreground Carding Mill Bay.1 Turner made another sketch of these buildings at the top of folio 78 (D26894), and the mill may be depicted in a sketch on the Gallanach Cliffs in the Sound of Mull no.1 sketchbook (Tate D26936; Turner Bequest CCLXXIV 1). Turner made a number of views looking north towards Oban from this point on folios 78 and 78 verso (D26985).
Near this point is a jetty from where Turner would have taken the ferry (perhaps the boat in the bay) to Kerrera.2

Thomas Ardill
February 2010

1
Wallace-Hadrill and Carolan 1991, p.29 as ‘Gallanach cliffs and sound of Kerrera from north, with Carding Mill.’
2
Ibid., p.27.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Carding Mill and the Cliffs at Gallanach with the Sound of Kerrera Near Oban 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 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-carding-mill-and-the-cliffs-at-gallanach-with-the-sound-of-r1135253, accessed 20 April 2024.