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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Scotland 1818-20 > Bass Rock and Edinburgh Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Nelson's Monument 1818

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Nelson's Monument’ 1818
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 54 Verso:
Nelson’s Monument 1818
D13416
Turner Bequest CLXV 52a
Pencil on white laid paper, 99 x 159 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Rather than a ‘Lighthouse on [the] coast’ as Finberg suggests,1 this is in fact Nelson’s Monument on Calton Hill with Edinburgh Castle in the background as seen from the north. The drawing is very faint and made up almost entirely of outlines, so that what are in fact hills, the castle and the mass of buildings in Edinburgh take on the appearance of rocks. The confusion is compounded by the sketches of Dunbar on the recto of this leaf and on the following page (folios 54 and 55; D13415, D13417; CLXV 52, 53).
There are drawings of Calton Hill on folios 45 verso, 47, 55 verso, 57, 57 verso, 59 and 60 (D13402, D13405, D13418, D13421, D13422, D13425, D13427; CLXV 45a, 47, 53a, 55, 55a, 57, 58) and studies of the Nelson Monument on folios 61 and 62 verso (D13429, D13432; CLXV 59, 60a).

Thomas Ardill
November 2007

1
Finberg 1909, I, p.480, CLXV 52a.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Nelson’s Monument 1818 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2007, 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-nelsons-monument-r1131962, accessed 26 April 2024.