Joseph Mallord William Turner

Mountains at the Head of Loch Scavaig; and ?Port Glasgow

1831

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In Tate Britain

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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 × 201 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D26580
Turner Bequest CCLXX 73

Catalogue entry

From the hilltops above Elgol pier, the two larger sketches on this page look towards the Cuillin Mountains at the head of Loch Scavaig and towards the entrance of Loch Coruisk. Gars-bhein is at the left with Sgurr na-Stri at the right and Loch na Cuile and Loch nan Leachd in between. There are further studies of the loch on folios 37 verso, 38, 69, 70, 72 verso and 78 verso–79 (D26509, D26510, D26752, D26754, D26579, D26591–D26592).1
At the top of the page is a small sketch of a town on the coast with a towered building. The town is unlikely to be anywhere on Skye, so the drawing must have been made on a separate occasion. It bears some resemblance to the small sketch of Port Glasgow from Greenock on folio 17 (D26468).

Thomas Ardill
March 2010

1
Identified by David Wallace–Hadrill and Janet Carolan, ‘Turner on the Isle of Skye 1831’, [circa 1991], Tate catalogue files, [folios 16–17].

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