Joseph Mallord William Turner

This large colour study has not been identified hitherto. It is based on two drawings in the Scotch Lakes sketchbook (Tate D03199–D03202; Turner Bequest LVI 146a–147, 147a–148). Both show the whole of this view, though the bridge over the River Teith appears only in the second of those sketches. In that drawing the castle appears only in general outline. It is rendered in greater detail in the first, where the identification is plain, as is the relationship between castle and bridge.

Doune is about four miles west of Dunblane, and Turner drew it on his way from there to Stirling during his tour of Scotland in 1801. Finberg describes this colour study as ‘unfinished’,1 but it may have been made in preparation for a large watercolour, comparable to the 1804 view of Edinburgh from Caulton–hill (Tate D03639; Turner Bequest LX H).2 The work was never executed.

Verso:

Blank