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

Gerald Finley has identified the peal tower, depicted twice on this page, as Preston Tower, and linked it to a visit that Turner made with Robert Cadell to Prestonpans on 30 September 1834.1 The excursion was made to see a house that Sir Walter Scott had lived in as a boy (folio 86; D26256), and included a visit to the nearby battlefield. In his diary Cadell recalls that they visited Preston Tower before returning to Edinburgh.2

The artist and publisher’s interest in the tower was biographical, as Scott had spent time as a child playing in its grounds. This lent the tower a similar significance in Scott’s life to Smailholm Tower, under the shadow of which lies Sandyknowe Farm, where the author lived for a time as a child; Turner made illustrations for both Scott’s Poetical Works and Lockhart’s Life of Scott with vignettes of Smailholm and Sandyknowe.3 It is perhaps significant that Turner and Cadell’s visit followed along similar lines to a visit made by Scott and Cadell on 27 June 1830. This had been an occasion not only to visit the battlefield, the house where Scott and stayed and Preston Tower, but also for the author to reminisce about his childhood. Cadell is likely to have relayed his memories of the visit to Turner. Scott’s diary entry for that day is transcribed in Lockhart’s Life of Scott.4 It is therefore likely that Preston Tower, along with the house at Prestonpans, were considered as potential illustrations to the Life of Scott.

At the centre of this page is a view of Preston Tower from the south, with a view from the north-east to the right. Both sketches display close attention to detail, and to the top left of the sketches Turner made three tiny studies of a corbel, one of the fourth-storey windows, and the triangular pediment between the gun loops and the fourth-storey windows.

Turner also sketched nearby sites at the bottom left of this page and on folio 82 verso (D26250). About a hundred yards to the north of the tower within the grounds is a lectern doocot (or dove cot). This is the small building with the sloped roof at the very bottom-left corner of the page. Next to this is the tower of Prestongrange Parish Church, nearby to the north, where Scott confessed that he had ‘yawned under the inflictions of a Doctor M’Cormick’.5 The rooftop at the bottom right of the page may belong to nearby Hamilton House, which was another residence of the Hamilton Family who built the tower. Opposite these sketches on folio 82 verso is the Mercat Cross, situated a few hundred metres to the south-east of the tower.