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

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

Joseph Mallord William Turner Ruined Tower, Perhaps Castle Craig, Cromary Firth or Coxton Tower Near Elgin 1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Ruined Tower, Perhaps Castle Craig, Cromary Firth or Coxton Tower Near Elgin’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 13 Verso:
Ruined Tower, Perhaps Castle Craig, Cromary Firth or Coxton Tower Near Elgin 1831
D27068
Turner Bequest CCLXXVII 13a
Pencil on off-white wove paper, 163 x 104 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘castle’ top
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Two suggestions have been made for the identification of this ruined tower. David Wallace-Hadrill has suggested it may be Coxton Tower near Elgin, as depicted by William Daniell in his A Voyage Round Great Britain: Coxtown Tower, near Elgin 1821 (aquatint, Tate T02899). However, Janet Carolan’s suggestion of Castle Craig on the southern shore of the Cromarty Firth opposite Evanton is perhaps more convincing, as Turner drew the tower on a loose sheet while staying with Hugh Munro at Novar House near Evanton (Tate D34845; Turner Bequest CCCXLIV d 359).1

Thomas Ardill
April 2010

1
David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan, ‘Sketchbook CCLXXVII Inverness’, [circa 1991], Tate catalogue files, [unpaginated].

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Ruined Tower, Perhaps Castle Craig, Cromary Firth or Coxton Tower Near Elgin 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 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-ruined-tower-perhaps-castle-craig-cromary-firth-or-coxton-r1135434, accessed 24 April 2024.