Although Turner made only a handful of sketches on the spot at Dunstanburgh in 1797, the exposed ruins continued to haunt his imagination. Back in London he experimented with ideas for pictures of the castle in various sketchbooks, in many of which he abandoned his preferred viewpoint from the south in order to explore other configurations of the fragmentary towers. Later in his career he utilised the view from the south again for two subjects that were in his Liber Studiorum and the Views in England and Wales.
Gallery label, August 2004
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