Joseph Mallord William Turner

Mull and Lismore from Barr-nam-boc, Kerrera

1831

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Staffa Sketchbook
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 116 × 186 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D26864
Turner Bequest CCLXXIII 63

Catalogue entry

These two sketches are of views from Barr-nam-boc Bay on the west coast of the island of Kerrera.1 The top sketch was inscribed ‘Mull’ by Turner, and shows the view west from the bay to the mountainous Isle of Mull. Turner has sketched the rocks at the south of the bay in the left foreground, but he has made them transparent so that they do not disrupt the view, and in the foreground he indicated waves lapping at the shoreline.

The sketch at the bottom of the page shows the view north towards Morvern with the island of Lismore in the foreground and, at the centre, what Wallace-Hadrill and Carolan described as ‘the lighthouse on the southern extremity of Lismore.’2 However, the lighthouse, actually standing on the islet of Eilean Musdile to the south of Lismore, was not built until 1833. This is therefore more likely to be the three-metre-high standing stone that stood on the islet before the lighthouse was erected.3

Turner made further sketches from Barr-nam-boc Bay on folios 61–62 verso (D26860–D26863).

Thomas Ardill
February 2010

Identified by Wallace-Hadrill and Carolan 1991, p.27.

Ibid.

‘Eilean Musdile, Lismore, Argyll’, posted 4 October 2008, The Northern Antiquarian, accessed 17 February 2010, http://megalithix.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/eilean-musdile-lismore-argyll/.

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