Joseph Mallord William Turner

This work is made from two pieces of paper, essentially worked separately. Peter Bower1 (1990) suggests that the lower part of the image was first painted on a lightweight wove white writing paper made by the Hollingworth & Balston partnership at Turkey Mill, Maidstone, Kent, along with a sky which Turner decided had to be discarded. His decision might have been an artistic one without precedent in the large number of works in the Turner Bequest, but Bower also suggests that the heavy, gum-rich washes employed in the foreground, which must have washed out much of the original glue size on the paper, and the thinner washes of a typical Turner sky, which would leave all the sizing intact and the paper very responsive to wetting, combined to make the lightweight paper cockle and wrinkle to an extent that made it impossible to continue. Thus Turner cut out the more finished lower half, retaining the crag of Calton Hill, the three arches of North Bridge carrying the road from Leith (outside the image and to the right) to the Old Town of Edinburgh, and the lower buildings of the Old Town. He laid it onto a sheet of heavier white paper of similar type, and then painted the rest of the Old Town rising towards the Castle, with the silhouette of Castle Rock seen through a misty atmosphere, and another sky.

The very golden yellow tonality is the result of extreme darkening of the paper due to light exposure, and complete loss of blue from the sky, for the same reason. The extreme edges of the paper were protected by a window mount. On the right edge, it is possible to see that the sky was a brighter blue over Calton Hill, and increasingly pale and cloudy towards the top of the paper. The left edge seems to suggest more cloudy greyness on the town side than on the right. The sun was glancing through to the right of Castle Rock, while the more pink-brown buildings at the lower end of the Old Town, and the very slightly red appearance of the left half of the sky, hint at quite dramatic lighting effects. The foreground and the vegetation on the crag of Calton Hill were presumably painted in mixed greens made from the same lost blue and a range of brown ochres. Only the ochres survive, against a much browner background than was intended. Indigo is the most likely candidate for the lost blue: Turner used in very frequently for skies and mixed greens at this date. Tiny highlights in white gouache, applied over much of North Bridge but placed in all areas of the image except the sky, could well have had more impact originally.