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

Gerald Finley identified this sketch as the on-the-spot study for Turner’s watercolour, No.39 Castle Street, Edinburgh circa 1836 (Pierpont Morgan Library, New York),1 which was engraved as the title vignette for volume IV of J.G. Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, 1839.2 Turner visited the former residence of Walter Scott, just of Prince’s Street in Edinburgh’s New Town, on 29 September 1834 in the company of Scott’s publisher Robert Cadell.3

Here we look south down Castle Street towards Edinburgh Castle which rises above the rooftops at the right of the page. Scott’s house is the building at the far left of the page with the semicircular bay to the right of the front door. The sketch is fairly detailed, the artist having taken the time to draw some of the stonework as well as the main architectural details. Turner has suggested the railing to the left of the door, though neglected to draw it to the right. When he came to paint his watercolour, he recalled this detail. In the watercolour there is a pediment above the bay window, a feature that is not in the sketch and is not now part of the building, suggesting that Turner either remembered or invented it. Another feature of the roof may be referred to in the inscription at the top of the page which seems to say, ‘Light some high’. It is interesting to note that at the centre of the sketch Turner has drawn an early gas lamp, though this does not appear in the watercolour or engraving.4 Further down the street Turner has paid less attention to the other buildings and drew only the outline of the castle, knowing that he could rely on many other sketches of the castle in this and the Edinburgh sketchbook: Tate D26218 (Turner Bequest CCLXVIII 63a). When he came to paint his watercolour, Turner had to sharpen the perspective of the street considerably to convert the landscape format sketch into a portrait format vignette. The building just to the right of number 39 is particularly squashed. Scott’s house still stands, though it has been converted to offices. Many of the buildings further down the street have since been rebuilt.

This is the only sketch of Castle Street. The following day Cadell drove Turner to Prestonpans where he sketched Scott’s childhood home in the Edinburgh sketchbook (Tate D26256; Turner Bequest CCLXVIII 86).