Joseph Mallord William Turner

This view of Edinburgh Castle was made from the Esplanade (or parade ground) looking forward to the Gate House and up to the castle. The most prominent feature is the imposing curved Half Moon Battery with its cannon embrasures clearly visible. Above the Battery to the left is the side of the Royal Palace, the architecture of which Turner has paid particular attention to, drawing its corner turrets and crenulations, and just fitting the central clock tower onto the top of the page. It was in a strong room of the Royal Palace in 1818 that Walter Scott found the Scottish Regalia, hidden since the Act of Union, 1707. The first number of the Provincial Antiquities was illustrated with an engraving by E. Goodall of A. Geddes’s painting of the ‘Regalia of Scotland’: ‘the first actual representation of those interesting relics of ancient monarchy’.1

Turner may have referred to this sketch when he made his watercolour of Edinburgh from Calton Hill, circa 1819 (watercolour, National Gallery of Scotland),2 for the fourth number of the Provincial Antiquities. Although the viewpoint differs, this sketch contains more architectural details than the sketch from Calton Hill (Scotch Antiquities Tate D13651, D13652; Turner Bequest CLXVII 39a, 40) on which the watercolour was more directly based.