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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Scotland 1831 > Sheets Associated with the 1831 Tour of ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Fingal's Cave, Staffa 1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Fingal's Cave, Staffa’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Fingal’s Cave, Staffa 1831
D34016
Turner Bequest CCCXLI 298
Pencil on light grey wove paper, 154 x 235 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCXLI – 298’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
In 2010 Thomas Ardill catalogued two drawings of Fingal’s Cave on similar grey paper (Tate D34001, D34002; Turner Bequest CCCXLI 284, 285), relating them to views in Turner’s Staffa sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest CCLXXIII). The present work and Tate D34015 (Turner Bequest CCCXLI 297) have since been identified as the same subject, possibly (as Ardill suggests) worked up in the studio while preparing the watercolour Fingal’s Cave, Staffa (currently untraced)1 for Sir Walter Scott’s Poetical Works, engraved as the title page vignette of The Lord of the Isles (1834; Tate impression: T04958).
The present work does not seem to relate precisely to any of the Staffa sketches, but compare Tate D26779–D26781 (Turner Bequest CCLXXIII 19a, 20, 20a), showing the approach to the cave from the south. Compare also William Daniell’s aquatint Entrance to Fingal’s Cave, Staffa (Tate impression: T02795) from his Voyage Round Great Britain.
There are chalk tests or doodles verso is D34017 (Turner Bequest CCCXLI 298v).
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.429 no.1089, reproduced.
Technical notes:
There is pale speckling across much of the sheet.

Matthew Imms
September 2016

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Fingal’s Cave, Staffa 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2016, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, October 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-fingals-cave-staffa-r1182323, accessed 26 April 2024.