J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Scotland 1831 > Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Carlisle 1831

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Carlisle’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 44 Recto:
Carlisle 1831
D25847
Turner Bequest CCLXVI 44
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 187 mm
Inscribed in blue ink by John Ruskin ‘44’ top right and ‘342’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXVI 44’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Continued from folio 43 verso (D25846) is a view of Carlisle that formed the basis of Turner’s frontispiece design for volume 1 of Scott’s Poetical Works: Carlisle circa 1832 (watercolour, Yale Center for British Art).1 The view is from about a mile to the north-east of Carlisle, and shows on the present page the castle with Eden Bridge below it and part of Carlisle Cathedral to the left. The Eden River and its banks fill the foreground. In the watercolour design Turner shifted several elements about, moving the bridge to the right, clearing the banks at the right foreground of the drawing of trees, but adding more trees and showing more of the bank in the centre foreground. A combination of several sketches contributed to the final design, including the depiction of the castle on folio 45 (D25849).
For further sketches of Carlisle in this sketchbook see folio 39 verso (D25838).

Thomas Ardill
September 2009

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.427 no.1070.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Carlisle 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2009, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-carlisle-r1134214, accessed 16 April 2024.