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

The largest sketch across the top half of this page is of a view south down Loch Fyne made from north of Inveraray. The town is indicated by four parallel vertical lines with a horizontal line above for the pier and a jagged line indicating the rooftops at the centre of the sketch. A box shape to the right, which is reflected in the water below is another notable feature which David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan have suggested is either Inveraray or Dunderave Castle.1 If the view is indeed from Cairndow, as the authors suggest, then the castle must be Dunderave (see Tate D26632, D26634; Turner Bequest CCLXXI 7a, 8a), and the promontory suggested in the foreground must be the one at the west of Cairndow. Turner reached this point on the loch after visiting Inveraray and Dunderave Castle and rounding the top of the loch. From Cairndow he headed east along Glen Kinglass to Glen Croe and onto Loch Long.

The sketch at the bottom of the page shows another view towards Inveraray, though this one was probably made at the mouth of Loch Shira, or near Garron Bridge. There is a boat in the foreground, and perhaps another at the left.

At the right of the page is a small sketch of Garron Bridge (see folio 20; D26474). Wallace-Hadrill and Carolan have suggested that ‘Turner’s repeated sketching of the little Garron bridge suggests that he was attracted by the possibility of its providing a foreground element in a watercolour of Inveraray Castle seen from the north, but nothing seems to have come of it.’2 Inveraray was not a subject connected with the immediate object of Turner’s 1831 tour, the collection of views to illustrate Sir Walter Scott’s Poetical Works, so any interest Turner had in the town and Loch Fyne were speculative.

For more information on Turner’s sketches of Loch Fyne see folio 19 verso (D26473).