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

This double-page view (continuing on folio 45; D13659; CLXVII 43) is taken from the west side of Linlithgow Loch, and looks through the trees and across the water to Linlithgow Palace with St Michael’s Church to its right. The two buildings are drawn in minimal detail, although the outlines are precise enough to identify the main parts of both structures. In the centre of the current page is a tree that helps to frame the architecture and define the relationship between foreground and background. The basic shape of this tree is the same as the one Turner placed at the right of his 1821 watercolour of Linlithgow Palace (Manchester City Art Galleries).1 The foreground continues on folio 45 with ash and sycamore trees and rushes by the waterside.

There is a similar view on folio 50 verso (D13670; CLXVII 48a), along with several more sketches of the palace from the west, making this the most frequently sketched viewpoint of the building in the Scotch Antiquities sketchbook (folios 51 verso, 52 verso, 53 and 54; D13672, D13673, D13674 and D13675; CLXVII 49a, 45c, 50, 51). Turner used a view from the west for his painting of Linlithgow Palace, Scotland exhibited at his gallery in 1810 (Walker Art Gallery, oil on canvas).2