Joseph Mallord William Turner

Oban from the Pier

1831

Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)

License this image

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
D26932
Turner Bequest CCLXXIII 97

Catalogue entry

This sketch has been identified as depicting Oban from the pier.1 We therefore look south from just beyond the bay to the quay with Pulpit Hill at the right. The pier is seen in a sketch on folio 98 verso (D26933; CCLXXIII 97a), and Turner stood on Pulpit Hill for another view of the town (folio 79 verso; D26898). The artist may have made this sketch as he was leaving Oban by steamboat, perhaps on his way to Inverness via Fort William. For further sketches of Oban see folio 58 verso (D26855).
Although this page is numbered ‘97’ according to John Ruskin’s numbering, which was followed by Finberg when he gave it a Turner Bequest number (CCLXXIII 97), it has since been rebound at the end of the sketchbook, making this folio 98.

Thomas Ardill
February 2010

1
Wallace-Hadrill and Carolan 1991, p.29.

Read full Catalogue entry

Explore

You might like

Left Right

In the shop

Browse the shop