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

A scribbled wavy line at the top right of this very rough sketch suggests a plume of steam from a steamboat funnel, as in the sketch of two steamboats on folio 86 (D27152). The sketch is unlikely, however, to depict a ‘steamer on [a] lake’, as Finberg suggested,1 as all of Turner’s steamboat tours of lochs and canals in Scotland had been undertaken before he began using this sketchbook in Inverness. It is therefore likely to have been executed during Turner’s journey by sea from Aberdeen to Edinburgh. See folio 55 verso (D27118) for references to further sketches made during this journey.