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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Scotland 1834 > Edinburgh Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Melrose Abbey 1834

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Melrose Abbey’ 1834
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 53 Recto:
Melrose Abbey 1834
D26198
Turner Bequest CCLXVIII 53
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 181 mm
Inscribed in red ink by John Ruskin ‘53’ bottom left descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLXVIII – 53’ bottom left descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This quite rapidly executed sketch is of Melrose Abbey from the east. It therefore looks towards the large east window with the remains of the tower above, the relatively intact south transept at the left and the more ruinous north transept at the right. To the left of the sketch is the spire of Melrose Parish Church, and to the right are the hills to the north of the River Tweed. At the top of the page is a sketch of nearby hills.
This is the only view of the abbey in this sketchbook, though Turner had made numerous sketches in the Abbotsford sketchbook during a visit on 8 August 1831, in preparation for an illustration to Sir Walter Scott’s Poetical Works: see Tate D25946 (Turner Bequest CCLXVII 11). In 1834 Turner was collecting subjects for illustrations to Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley Novels and may have had Melrose in mind for an illustration to The Monastery, 1820.1

Thomas Ardill
January 2011

1
Melrose Abbey had by 1834 already been illustrated by James Skene for his A Series of Sketches of the Existing Localities alluded to in the Waverley Novels Etched from Original Drawings, Edinburgh 1830, facing p.142, and engraved by William Finden after David Roberts for Charles Tilt, Landscape Illustrations of the Waverley Novels, with Descriptions of the Views, vol.II, London 1832, facing p.45 ‘Cross of Melrose’. When Turner pulled out of the commission to illustrate the ‘Abbotsford edition’ of the Waverley Novels, Robert Cadell employed Clarkson Stanfield instead whose ‘Melrose Abbey, from the Quarry’ was engraved by Robert Brandard as the frontispiece to the fifth volume illustrating The Monastery: Sir Walter Scott, Waverley Novels [Abbotsford Edition], vol.V, Edinburgh 1844.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Melrose Abbey 1834 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2011, 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-melrose-abbey-r1136126, accessed 27 April 2024.