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 > Scotland and London Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Alternative Design for 'Borthwick Castle' 1818-19

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Alternative Design for 'Borthwick Castle'’ 1818-19
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 1 Recto:
Alternative Design for ‘Borthwick Castle’ 1818–19
D13814
Turner Bequest CLXX 1
Pencil on off-white wove paper, 177 x 256 mm
Faint pink remains of John Ruskin’s red ink inscription bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLXX – 1’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This very faint and rather slight, though carefully rendered, sketch of Borthwick Castle forms an alternative design for the Borthwick Castle illustration to Walter Scott’s Provincial Antiquities publication. The composition that Turner selected for the final watercolour, Borthwick Castle, 1818 (Indianapolis Museum of Art),1 is on folio 2 of this sketchbook (D13815; CLXX 2). The present sketch shows a view of the castle from the south just across the River Gore, which surrounds the castle on three sides, and was based on a sketch in the Scotch Antiquities sketchbook (Tate D13725; Turner Bequest CLXVII 76a).
There are glue marks down the left side of the page.
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.426 no.1060.
Verso:
Blank

Thomas Ardill
August 2009

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Alternative Design for ‘Borthwick Castle’ 1818–19 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2009, 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-alternative-design-for-borthwick-castle-r1132298, accessed 23 April 2024.