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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Stirling Castle with Bannock Burn from near Borestone 1834

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 48 Verso:
Stirling Castle with Bannock Burn from near Borestone 1834
D26350
Turner Bequest CCLXIX 48a
Pencil on off-white wove paper, 113 x 190 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Drawn with the sketchbook inverted is a faint sketch that has been identified as one of several views of Stirling Castle from the south (see folio 46 verso; D26346 for further references).1 More specifically, however, it is a view from near the village of Borestone with Bannock Burn in the foreground. It is one of a number of sketches in which Turner tried out different views of the battlefield of Bannockburn with the castle in the distance. While the sketch is quite slight and economical in detail, there is a certain flourish and confidence in Turner’s free but precise lines. Henry Crawford admired this, and pointed to this drawing as an example of ‘showing the suggestion of essentials an artist can get into a few pencil strikes.’2
See folio 46 verso for more information on Turner’s sketches of Bannockburn, and see folio 44 verso (D26342) for a full list of Turner’s sketches of Stirling in this book.

Thomas Ardill
October 2010

1
Crawford 1936, p.26.
2
Ibid.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Stirling Castle with Bannock Burn from near Borestone 1834 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 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-stirling-castle-with-bannock-burn-from-near-borestone-r1136280, accessed 20 September 2024.