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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Scotland 1831 > Stirling and the West Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Footbridge over the Achray Water, Trossachs 1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Footbridge over the Achray Water, Trossachs’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 49 Verso:
Footbridge over the Achray Water, Trossachs 1831
D26533
Turner Bequest CCLXX 49a
Pencil on white wove paper, 125 x 201 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch of a wooden footbridge over a stream with wooded hills and mountain peaks has been identified by David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan as near Loch Achray.1 While no bridge quite like the one Turner has drawn has been found, there is now a modern wooden bridge over the Achray Water about halfway between Loch Katrine and Loch Achray. If Turner’s bridge was close to this, then his view must be looking west with the wooded hillside of Craig Leven at the right and the peak of Ben Venue at the left.
Therefore Turner must have made this sketch on his way through the Trossachs from Loch Katrine to Loch Achray. For more information on Turner’s visit to Loch Katrine and Loch Achray and references to his sketches of them see folio 47 and 49 respectively (D26528, D26532).

Thomas Ardill
October 2009

1
David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan, ‘Turner Round the Clyde and in Islay – 1831’, 1991, Tate catalogue files, folio 4.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Footbridge over the Achray Water, Trossachs 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 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-footbridge-over-the-achray-water-trossachs-r1134967, accessed 02 October 2025.