Joseph Mallord William Turner

A Ruined Tower on a Wooded Hill above a Two-Arched Bridge and Cottage

1801

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Dunbar Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 115 × 164 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D02782
Turner Bequest LIV 101 a

Catalogue entry

The drawing is inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation. A colour study of this composition is in the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.1 The context of this drawing in the sketchbook suggests that the site is somewhere between Rievaulx (see folio 102 verso; D02784) and the Yorkshire coast, apparently the location of the drawings on folios 97 verso and 98 verso (D02774, D02776); drawings of Scarborough and Whitby occur a little further on in the sequence, on folios 83 verso–96 recto (D02746–D02771).
The identification of the subjects of folios 99 verso and 100 verso–101 recto (D02778, D02780–D02781) has yet to be determined; it is possible that the gateway on D02780–D02781 is part of the castle that appears in this drawing.

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.327 no.250, reproduced.

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