Joseph Mallord William Turner

Henry Crawford described these sketches, drawn with the book turned to the right, as ‘four rough structural sketches of the [Stirling] Castle buildings in outline’, and points out that the top sketch includes ‘a few rough circles depicting the King’s Knot.’1 This is an octagonal stepped mound in King’s Park to the south-west of the castle that by the nineteenth century had already been out of use as a garden for a century and had therefore become indistinct.2 This and the other three sketches of the castle were therefore made from King’s Park to the south-west of the castle. The sketch at the bottom of the page is a close-up study of the south-east corner of the castle. This is the first page in a series of sketches of the castle from the south: folios 50–51 verso (D26353–D26356). See folio 46 verso (D26342) for a full list of Turner’s sketches of Stirling.