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 Tantallon Castle and Bass Rock 1818

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Tantallon Castle and Bass Rock’ 1818
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 30 Verso:
Tantallon Castle and Bass Rock 1818
D13508
Turner Bequest CLXVI 30a
Pencil on white wove paper, 90 x 112 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Drawn with the book inverted and continuing on to folio 31 (D13509) is a drawing of the Bass Rock and Tantallon Castle as seen from the craggy shoreline beneath the castle known as Gin Head. On this page is the north side of Tantallon Castle perched on the steep cliff that forms the castle’s natural defences on three sides. Turner made dozens of sketches of Tantallon Castle during this 1818 tour of Scotland and illustrated the subject for Scott’s Provincial Antiquities: Tantallon Castle, 1821 (watercolour, Manchester City Art Galleries).1

Thomas Ardill
December 2007

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.426 no.1067.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Tantallon Castle and Bass Rock 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-tantallon-castle-and-bass-rock-r1132053, accessed 19 April 2024.