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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Upper Fall of Foyers from the Bridge 1831

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 31 Verso:
The Upper Fall of Foyers from the Bridge 1831
D27021
Turner Bequest CCLXXVI 31a
Pencil on off-white laid writing paper, 179 x 150 mm irregular
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Foyers Upper Fall is recognisable here by the pool and the weir above the waterfall. The view, as David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan suggest, must be from the bridge above the falls, which Turner depicts in several of his sketches of Foyers (see folio 40; D27033).1 The sketch is quite detailed and Turner used a variety of pencil lines, flourishes and shading to represent the falling and foaming water as it bubbled over the weir and raced down the waterfall.

Thomas Ardill
April 2010

1
David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan, ‘Turner’s 1831 Sketchbook T.B. CCLXXVI Fort Augustus’, [circa 1992–3], Tate catalogue files, [unpaginated].

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘The Upper Fall of Foyers from the Bridge 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2010, 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-upper-fall-of-foyers-from-the-bridge-r1135386, accessed 18 September 2024.