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 Mayburgh Henge, Eamont Bridge, Penrith 1831

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Mayburgh Henge, Eamont Bridge, Penrith’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 25 Verso:
Mayburgh Henge, Eamont Bridge, Penrith 1831
D25810
Turner Bequest CCLXVI 25a
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 187 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This view of Mayburgh Henge from the south, continued on folio 26 (D25811), brings us closer to the standing stone than the drawing on folios 26 verso–27 (D25812–D25813), which was the basis for Turner’s design for the vignette illustration to volume 11 (The Bridal of Triermain) of Sir Walter Scott’s Poetical Works: Mayburgh circa 1832 (whereabouts unknown).1 Unlike that sketch, however, this version includes the distance building above the trees at the left which may be Penrith Castle, lifted even higher in the final design.
The current page shows the western half of the henge, with the standing stone at the far right and the circular mound surrounding the site (which Turner must have stood on) at the bottom left and then behind the stone. At the top right of the page is a slight continuation of a sketch of the distant Cumbrian mountains from folio 26.
See folio 26 verso (D25812) for more information and references to further sketches of Mayburgh.

Thomas Ardill
September 2009

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.429 no.1091.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Mayburgh Henge, Eamont Bridge, Penrith 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-mayburgh-henge-eamont-bridge-penrith-r1134177, accessed 06 June 2025.