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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Scotland 1831 > Rokeby and Appleby Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Brough Castle, Cumbria 1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Brough Castle, Cumbria’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 36 Recto:
Brough Castle, Cumbria 1831
D25593
Turner Bequest CCLXIV 36
Pencil on white wove paper, 74 x 94 mm
Inscribed in red ink by John Ruskin ‘36’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXIV – 36’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The identification of this rather wobbly drawing as Brough Castle is based on its proximity to several views of Fox Tower in Helbeck near Brough in Cumbria (see folio 34; D25589). Turner passed both structures as he travelled between Appleby and Barnard Castle, and as Gerald Wilkinson has pointed out, the sketch has the appearance of being made from a moving coach.1
This view of the castle with the keep at the right of the picture, and indeed all the others, were evidently made from the north, and therefore from the road. Finberg’s identification of this sketch as a ‘Ruined castle on a rock’ is slightly misleading as the medieval castle in fact stands on what was originally an originally Roman earthwork. There are further sketches of the castle on folios 33 verso, 34 verso, 35, 37, 37 verso and 38 (D25588, D25590, D25591, D25595, D25596). Folio 37 is the most similar to the present sketch.

Thomas Ardill
September 2009

1
Gerald Wilkinson, Turner’s Colour Sketches 1820–34, London 1975, p.67.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Brough Castle, Cumbria 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 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-brough-castle-cumbria-r1133953, accessed 25 April 2024.