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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inside the Chapter House of Elgin Cathedral 1831

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 137 Verso:
Inside the Chapter House of Elgin Cathedral 1831
D27212
Turner Bequest CCLXXVII 137a
Pencil on off-white wove paper, 104 x 163 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
These two sketches depict the elaborately vaulted ceiling of Elgin Cathedral’s octagonal chapter house.1 The ceiling is supported by a single column from where vaulting fans out to each corner. The larger sketch was probably made from the doorway to the cathedral, and the sketch at the left may show the doorway itself with the chapter house beyond, as seen from the north aisle.
This is one of fourteen pages of sketches of Elgin Cathedral in the Inverness sketchbook, see folio 139 (D27215) for references.

Thomas Ardill
May 2010

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

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Inside the Chapter House of Elgin Cathedral 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 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-inside-the-chapter-house-of-elgin-cathedral-r1135578, accessed 28 March 2024.