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 > Scotch Antiquities Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Blackness Castle 1818

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Blackness Castle’ 1818
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 58 Verso:
Blackness Castle 1818
D13683
Turner Bequest CLXVII 55a
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 186 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
As Katrina Thomson suggests, Turner probably sketched Blackness Castle on his return to Edinburgh from sketching Linlithgow Palace.1 Blackness Castle, built on a small promontory into the Firth of Forth near the village of Blackness, was one of the subjects proposed by Walter Scott for the Provincial Antiquities project but never published.2 Here the castle is seen from the west with Blackness Bay in the foreground and the village to the right on folio 59 (D13684; CLXVII 56).
Turner made further sketches of the castle in the Edinburgh 1818 sketchbook, (Tate D13516–D13519; Turner Bequest CLXVII 32a–34).

Thomas Ardill
March 2008

1
Katrina Thomson, Turner and Sir Walter Scott: The Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque Scenery of Scotland, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh 1999, p.28.
2
See Thomson 1997, p.[14] for a list of the published and proposed Provincial Antiquities subjects.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Blackness Castle 1818 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 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-blackness-castle-r1132230, accessed 26 April 2024.