The ‘abbey’ is now the parish church of Dunblane, Stirling, and is known as Dunblane Cathedral. The twelfth- and thirteenth-century building fell into partial disuse and ruin in the late sixteenth century following the 1560s Protestant reformation; the choir, beyond the present composition to the left (east), remained in use but the roof of the nave was not restored until the 1890s. Turner’s vantage point was to the north-west, with Allan Water in the foreground; there is now a railway bridge across the river just to the north, though this view remains unimpeded.
Turner’s
Liber Studiorum composition is based on two pencil drawings – one in the
Scotch Lakes sketchbook (Tate
D03197,
D03198; Turner Bequest LVI 145a–146), and the other in the Ruskin School Collection at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford,
1 made on the return leg of Turner’s first tour of Scotland in 1801. The Oxford sketch was originally a leaf of the
Smaller Fonthill sketchbook (some pages at Tate; Turner Bequest XLVIII); several other
Liber designs were derived from the same book:
Drawing of the Clyde (indirectly),
Coast of Yorkshire and
Rivaux Abbey (Tate
D08122,
D08129,
D08154; Turner Bequest CXVI U, CXVII B, Z), and
Solway Moss.
2The two pencil studies are from the same angle, the Ashmolean’s being larger and more detailed, though both are sketchy; Turner had recorded the shallow spire and more of the building and trees to the left of the tower, but truncated them in the Liber design and introduced another focus – the laundry activities on the river bank, possibly recorded on the spot with slight, cursive indications below the west end of the building in the Smaller Fonthill drawing.
Gillian Forrester makes a comparison with a painting by Richard Wilson, owned by Turner’s patron Dr Monro at about the time of Turner’s closest involvement with him:
Tivoli, the Cascatelle and the ‘Villa of Maecenas’, circa 1752 (Dulwich Picture Gallery, London).
3 Another version, now catalogued as from Wilson’s studio, was owned by Turner himself (Tate
N05538).
4 The similarities, limited to the general arrangement of buildings on a wooded hillside to the left and figures (artists in Wilson’s case) in the valley foreground, are perhaps only fortuitous echoes, though they are indicative of Turner’s idealising tendencies.
