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

Over the final page of the sketchbook and continuing onto the inside back cover (D40916) is a faint panoramic sketch of a landscape with a cottage in the foreground, fields beyond and the ‘Pentland Hills’ in the distance. Victor Partridge, a Countryside Ranger for the Pentland Hills Regional Park, has identified the hills as, from left to right on the present page: Carnethy, Turnhouse and Harbour, and on the inside back cover of the sketchbook: Carnethy, Allermuir and Caerketton.1 A photograph he has taken of the range from Hirendean Castle in the Moorfoot Hills matches Turner’s view closely, and Gladhouse Cottage and Reservoir in the foreground of the photograph also resemble the cottage and area of water to its right in Turner’s sketch.2

Gladhouse is about five miles south-west of Borthwick Castle, but to have included this in his visit to Dalkeith, Borthwick and Crichton would have extended the journey from a twnety-five- to a thirty-five-mile round trip, and there are no other sketches that indicate he travelled any further south of Edinburgh than Borthwick on his sketching tours of Scotland in 1818. It is therefore only possible to say that the sketch shows the view looking west from a position ten or so miles south-east of Edinburgh. At the bottom of the present page is a slight view of hills with an island in the foreground. The outline matches Caerketton Hill and if Turner did travel to Gladhouse then the island could be the one in the reservoir.

There is a pink ink mark towards the bottom of the page, and a green mark on the fore-edge.