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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Wales 1798 > Dynevor Castle Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Dunstanburgh Castle: The Ruins Seen above a Cliff with the Sea in the Foreground ?1798

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Dunstanburgh Castle: The Ruins Seen above a Cliff with the Sea in the Foreground’ ?1798
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 84 Verso:
Dunstanburgh Castle: The Ruins Seen above a Cliff with the Sea in the Foreground ?1798
D01603
Turner Bequest XL 82a
Pencil on white wove paper, 135 x 95 mm
Watermark ‘1794 | J Whatman’
Inscribed in red ink ‘11’ top left, upside down
Stamped in black ‘XL – 82 a’ top right, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The composition is continued on folio 85 recto opposite (D01604; Turner Bequest XL 83). Another drawing of Dunstanburgh Castle is on folios 82 verso–83 recto (D01599–D01600; Turner Bequest XL 80a–81).
A further study showing the easternmost or Lilburn Tower in a thunderstorm is in the Wilson sketchbook (Tate D01211–D01212; Turner Bequest XXXVII 94–95). Turner’s main response to Dunstanburgh, however, is recorded in a sequence of drawings in the North of England sketchbook of 1797 (Tate D00952–D00954; Turner Bequest XXXIV 45, 46, 46a), and the scattered studies in other books may be meditations on those, rather than sketches made on the spot either in 1797 or on another tour. Turner executed two oil paintings of Dunstanburgh in these years (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and Dunedin Art Gallery, New Zealand)1, so he may well have been preoccupied by the subject.

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, respectively pp.4–5 no.6, pl.4 (colour) and pp.23–4 no.32, pl.28.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Dunstanburgh Castle: The Ruins Seen above a Cliff with the Sea in the Foreground ?1798 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-dunstanburgh-castle-the-ruins-seen-above-a-cliff-with-the-r1173842, accessed 26 April 2024.