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 Linlithgow Loch; Blackness Castle 1818

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Linlithgow Loch; Blackness Castle’ 1818
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 36 Recto:
Linlithgow Loch; Blackness Castle 1818
D13519
Turner Bequest CLXVI 36
Pencil on white wove paper, 90 x 112 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Grey’
Stamped in black ‘CLXVI 36’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The three sketches on this page are part of a series of views of Linlithgow and Blackness Castles drawn over four pages: folios 34 verso–35 and 35 verso–36 (D13516–D13517 and D13518–D13519). The drawing at the top of the page may be the one that Finberg identified as ‘Linlithgow Lock’ [sic], and would therefore show the buildings at the south side of the loch that appear in the corner of another drawing in this sketchbook (folio 33; D13513), with the distant Bathgate Hills in the background. The sketch at the bottom of the page may also show some of these buildings surrounded, as they are, by trees. The loch, however, is not visible in the sketch. In the middle of the page is a view looking east to Blackness Castle which extends to folio 35 verso where we see the opposite north bank of the Firth of Forth with a little of the south bank in the foreground.1

Thomas Ardill
December 2007

1
A note in David Wallace-Hadrill’s unpublished research tentatively suggests the ‘Union Canal?’ as a subject of these drawings, but also questions the ‘date of union canal?’. (David Wallace-Hadrill, unpublished notes, [circa 1989–94], Tate catalogue files). Work on what was then known as the Edinburgh and Glasgow Union Canal which passes through Linlithgow began in March 1818, so this is unlikely to be the subject, unless it shows the digging of the canal, which is unclear from the sketch.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Linlithgow Loch; Blackness Castle 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-linlithgow-loch-blackness-castle-r1132064, accessed 26 April 2024.