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

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

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Shore of ?Loch Katrine With a Rainbow 1831

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Shore of ?Loch Katrine With a Rainbow’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 11 Recto:
The Shore of ?Loch Katrine With a Rainbow 1831
D26639
Turner Bequest CCLXXI 11
Pencil on off-white laid writing paper, 101 x 158 mm
Inscribed in red ink by John Ruskin ‘11’ top right running vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXI – 11’ top right running vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Although David Wallace-Hadrill wrote in an unpublished note that this sketch is likely to be of Loch Katrine,1 there is little other than the inscription on the back of the page (‘Kat’) (folio 11 verso; D26640) to indicate that this is the location of the sketch. In fact the landscape is unlike the shore of Loch Katrine, which is much more mountainous. The main interest in the drawing, however, is in the rainbow indicated by five arched lines in the sky, which is filled with clouds – a detail often left out of Turner’s pencil sketches. The landscape shows a path along the side of a loch or some other body of water. There may be a figure in the middle distance.
Sketches of Loch Katrine are on folios 11 verso, 14 and 16 verso (D26640, D26645, D26650).

Thomas Ardill
October 2009

1
David Wallace-Hadrill, ‘“Loch Long” (CCLXXI)’, [circa 1991], Tate catalogue files.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘The Shore of ?Loch Katrine With a Rainbow 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-the-shore-of-loch-katrine-with-a-rainbow-r1135076, accessed 19 April 2024.