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 > Edinburgh, 1818, Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Rocks 1818

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Rocks’ 1818
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 24 Recto:
Rocks 1818
D13495
Turner Bequest CLXVI 24
Pencil on white wove paper, 90 x 112 mm
Stamped in black ‘CLXVI 24’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
A view from the beach of the rocky East Lothian coast looking out to sea, although there are no distinctive topographical features in this sketch it is likely to show the rocky promontory upon which Dunbar Castle sits. The rocks and castle are sketched on the two following sketchbook pages, and there is series of views with a similar viewpoint and character in the Scotch Antiquities sketchbook (Tate D13617–D13634 and D13639–D13642; Turner Bequest CLXVII 18a–30 and 31c–33). One sketch in particular (Tate D13641; Turner Bequest CLXVII 32a) matches this view with the same conical-shaped rock in the middle of this page and at the right of the Scotch Antiquities sketchbook drawing. Dunbar was one of the subjects Turner illustrated for Scott’s Provincial Antiquities (Dunbar, circa 1823, watercolour, private collection),1 and this is one of his many sketches in preparation, here intended to record the geological character of the landscape rather than a useable composition.

Thomas Ardill
December 2007

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.426 no.1066.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Rocks 1818 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 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-rocks-r1132040, accessed 23 April 2024.