The Shore of a Loch, From the Water: Perhaps Loch Lomond

1831

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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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 x 201 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D26491
Turner Bequest CCLXX 28 a

Catalogue entry

This sketch of low hills, which also appears to depict an island, is probably one of the sketches that Turner made from the deck of a steamboat, travelling on one of the lochs to the west of the Trossachs (see Tour of Scotland for Scott’s Poetical Works 1831 Tour Introduction). David Wallace-Hadrill has suggested Loch Lomond as a possible location,1 in which case this must have been made from somewhere near Luss, where there are several islands and the hills on the eastern side of the loch are relatively low. If this is the case then the island may be Inchcailloch, as the island had been considered as a possible illustration to Scott’s Lady of the Lake, and may have still been in the reckoning when Turner passed it on his Loch Lomond journey.2

For further sketches of Loch Lomond see folio 23 (D26480).

Thomas Ardill
October 2009

David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan, ‘Turner Round the Clyde and in Islay – 1831’, 1991, Tate catalogue files, folio 2.

See folio 47 (D26528) for more on the subjects discussed as illustrations to Lady of the Lake, and see Gerald Finley, Landscapes of Memory: Turner as Illustrator to Scott, London 1980, p.242.

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