Joseph Mallord William Turner

Ruins of Dunbar

1818

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

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Not on display

Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Bass Rock and Edinburgh Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 99 × 159 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D13358
Turner Bequest CLXV 20 a

Catalogue entry

This very rough sketch, as Finberg suggests, probably shows the outline of the ruins of Dunbar Castle.1 The two tower shapes at the top of the sketch could be the ruins that are shown in Turner’s Dunbar, circa 1823 (watercolour, private collection),2 with the rocky promontory beneath. There are more easily identifiable sketches of these ruins later in the sketchbook.

Thomas Ardill
October 2007

1
Finberg 1909, I, p.479, CLXV 20a.
2
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.426 no.1066.

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