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

With the sketchbook turned to the left are three sketches of Gilnockie, or Johnny Armstrong’s Tower. As Gerald Finley has explained, Turner visited Johnny Armstrong’s Tower on his journey to Langholm on the 2 August 1831,1 and part of this route has been traced on folio 42 verso (D25606). Johnny Armstrong’s Tower was on Robert Cadell’s proposed list of illustrations for Scott’s Poetic Works,2 and eventually ended up as the title vignette to volume 2: Johnnie Armstong’s Tower circa 1832 (watercolour, Taft Museum, Cincinnati).3

Turner’s three sketches of the tower on the present page are all from different viewpoints. At the top is a distant view, probably made from the south as Turner approached the castle. While it is only shown in faint outline, this sketch does demonstrate its topographical position on a high bank of the River Esk as seen in the Scott design. The sketch beneath is taken nearer, from the south and demonstrates how the peel tower had lost its roof, though its two gables were still present (the roof was restored in the 1980s). The final view to the left of the page is from the south-east and is the most detailed of the three, showing the tower’s crow-stepped gables, corbels, windows and stonework.

There is another sketch of the tower on folio 45 verso of this sketchbook (D25612), and there are further views in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border sketchbook (Tate D25881; Turner Bequest CCLXVI 61).