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 Two Views of Firth of Forth from Calton Hill 1818

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Two Views of Firth of Forth from Calton Hill’ 1818
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 40 Verso:
Two Views of Firth of Forth from Calton Hill 1818
D13528
Turner Bequest CLXVI 40a
Pencil on white wove paper, 90 x 112 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
From the top of Calton Hill, Turner made two views of the Firth of Forth across this and the next sketchbook page (folio 41; D13529). The lower sketch was made from the path near the City Observatory and looks north and north-east over the city and across the Forth with the island of Inchkeith at the centre of this page, and across to the Fife shore on folio 41 with buildings in the city of Edinburgh just to the north of Calton Hill. The top sketch looks across to the shore of Fife, perhaps at Burntisland which can be seen on the following page.
Turner made several views from Calton Hill including the sketch in the Scotch Antiquities sketchbook (Tate D13651–D13652; Turner Bequest CLXVII 39a–40) that formed the basis of his watercolour Edinburgh from Calton Hill, circa 1819 (National Gallery of Scotland).1

Thomas Ardill
July 2008

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.426 no.1062.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Two Views of Firth of Forth from Calton Hill 1818 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2008, 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-two-views-of-firth-of-forth-from-calton-hill-r1132073, accessed 19 September 2024.