Joseph Mallord William Turner

Duniquoich Hill, Inveraray; and Carrick Castle, Loch Goil

1831

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Stirling and the West Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 125 x 201 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D26471
Turner Bequest CCLXX 18 a

Catalogue entry

This sketch of Duniquoich Hill (Dùn na Cuaiche) with Aray Bridge was probably made from Inveraray Pier to the south. Having crossed Loch Fyne on the ferry from St Catherine’s (folio 16; D26466), Turner landed at Inveraray Pier, and made a sketch of the view that he had painted in watercolour in 1801 (Tate D03635 ad D41247; Turner Bequest LX D and LVI 38b). Drawing the hill in detail with its wooded slopes and the watchtower at its summit meant that in other sketches Turner could save time by just drawing the outline, as in folio 19 (D26472), which was also made from the pier or near by. For further sketches of Inveraray, see folio 19 verso (D26473).
Surrounding the depiction of the hill are five sketches that Finberg, in his inventory, identified as Kilchurn Castle on the shore of Loch Awe;1 although in his own copy of the book he later changed this to Carrick Castle with a pencil annotation.2 The original identification was followed in an exhibition catalogue of 1982, though David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan noted the later correction in the course of their research.3 The two authors also offered Dunderave Castle as a possible identification (though a less likely one),4 but Carrick remains by far the closest visual match to the sketches, and matches the inscription on the other side of this page (folio 18; D26470).
It is curious that the most detailed sketches that Turner made of Carrick Castle were not made as he passed the structure while travelling up Loch Goil; they were apparently made when he passed the castle for a second time, from a distance of about two miles at the mouth of Loch Goil, as he travelled down the length of Loch Long (see folio 17 verso; D26469).5 Wallace-Hadrill and Carolan have pointed out:
That these little marginal sketches must have been added to the page after the main drawing of Duniquoich had been completed: it is impossible to think that Turner sketched the castle four [sic] times, squeezing the little sketches round the edge of an empty page.6

Thomas Ardill
October 2008

1
Finberg 1909, vol.II, p.869.
2
The book is held in the Prints and Drawings study room at Tate Britain.
3
David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan, ‘Turner in Argyll in 1831: Inveraray to Oban’, Turner Studies, vol. 11, no.1, Summer 1991, p.20.
4
Ibid.
5
David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan, ‘Turner Round the Clyde and in Islay – 1831’, 1991, Tate catalogue files, folios 5 and 7.
6
Hadrill and Carolan, ‘Turner in Argyll’, 1991, p.20.

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