Joseph Mallord William Turner

Finberg was the first to identify these three sketches as studies of Norham Castle on the River Tweed.1 The fact that Turner sketched the castle in 1831 corroborates (to some extent) Walter Thornbury’s anecdote that as the artist and Robert Cadell passed the castle:

Better evidence and more information about these sketches is provided by Robert Cadell’s own diary, which Gerald Finley has linked to the present sketch and another on folio 58 (D26028; CCLXVII 60).3 The artist and publisher passed the castle on 10 August 1831 as they took the stage coach from Kelso to ‘Berwick by Coldstream & Cornhill’, where they ‘saw Norham at the distance of two miles as we passed’.4 This must have been the point at which they first saw the castle, as the road to Berwick would have brought them within a mile of it and Turner is likely to have got closer to make these sketches.

With the sketchbook turned to the right are three sketches. The top and middle sketches are from the west (see also folio 58). This is the direction from which the castle is seen in several previous works: Norham Castle, Sunrise, 1798 (watercolour, Trustees of the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford);5 the Liber Studiorum design, Norham Castle on the Tweed circa 1806–7, (watercolour, Tate D08158; Turner Bequest CXVIII D); and in the Rivers of England design, Norham Castle on the Tweed 1824 (engraving, Tate T04799). At the bottom of the page is a small sketch of the castle seen from the east. The sequence of sketches from west to east therefore follows the coach’s route as it went past the castle on the way to Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Norham had been discussed as a possible subject to illustrate Sir Walter Scott’s Poetical Works, but by the time Turner made these sketches it was no longer being considered.6 Therefore this fact and the lack of detail in the sketches imply that Turner made the sketches, as Finley suggests, as ‘a reflex action, since he considered the castle as a kind of personal touch-stone.’7 However, Norham was illustrated in 1834 for Scott’s Prose Works – Norham Castle – Moonrise circa 1833 (private collection) –8 although Butlin and Joll’s suggestion that the present page formed the basis of the watercolour design for this engraving is unlikely, considering the similarity of the design to those for the Liber Studiorum and Rivers of England.9 But another writer’s comment that seeing the castle in 1831 ‘may well have rekindled Turner’s interest in the theme’ is more plausible.10