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

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

Joseph Mallord William Turner Jedburgh Abbey from the South 1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Jedburgh Abbey from the South’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 75 Verso:
Jedburgh Abbey from the South 1831
D26063
Turner Bequest CCLXVII 77a
Pencil on off-white wove writing paper, 113 x 185 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Like folio 63 verso (D26039; CCLXVII 65a), which formed the basis of Turner’s watercolour of Jedburgh Abbey circa 1832 (Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati),1 this view of the abbey, made with the book inverted, is from the south. Rather than being from the stone bridge, however, this sketch is from further away across the Jed Water. The tower of the seventeenth-century Parish Church (no longer extant) is at the left of the abbey and there is a path or road in the foreground. The sketch on folio 76 (D26064; CCLXVII 78) is a similar view.
At the top left of the page is a sketch of Jedburgh Castle Jail, probably taken from the same place, but looking in the opposite direction. There is another slightly more detailed sketch of the jail on folio 76.

Thomas Ardill
September 2009

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.427 no.1072.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Jedburgh Abbey from the South 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-jedburgh-abbey-from-the-south-r1134431, accessed 24 April 2024.