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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner View along the River Clyde with Dumbarton Rock in the Distance, Seen from the East 1801

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 25 Verso:
View along the River Clyde with Dumbarton Rock in the Distance, Seen from the East 1801
D02961
Turner Bequest LVI 25a
Pencil on white wove paper, 184 x 114 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The subject is continued on folio 26 recto opposite (D02962). Dumbarton, an isolated rock surmounted by a medieval fortress that had been rebuilt and extended in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, dominates the surrounding flat landscape of the Clyde estuary; the town of Dumbarton itself is at a little distance across the water to the north, on low-lying terrain.
Turner was preoccupied by the dramatic bulk of the mound-shaped Rock and drew it from many angles as he travelled from Bowling in the east, through the town of Dumbarton and out on to the road north east to Lomond. Other views are on folios 26 verso–27 recto, 27 verso–28 recto, 28 verso, 29 recto, 29 verso–30 recto, 30 verso, 31 recto and verso, 32 recto and verso, 33 recto and verso, 34 recto, and 35 verso (D02963–D02978, D02980).
There is another, of Dumbarton at the very end of the book, on folios 184 verso–185 recto (D03271–D03272; Turner Bequest LVI 182a–183).

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘View along the River Clyde with Dumbarton Rock in the Distance, Seen from the East 1801 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-view-along-the-river-clyde-with-dumbarton-rock-in-the-r1179154, accessed 28 March 2024.