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

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

Joseph Mallord William Turner Blackford Hill, Edinburgh 1831

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Blackford Hill, Edinburgh’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 63 Verso:
Blackford Hill, Edinburgh 1831
D25757
Turner Bequest CCLXV 63a
Pencil on white wove paper, 59 x 96 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Blackford Hill’ centre
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch is inscribed ‘Blackford Hill’, a hill to the south of Edinburgh which offers fantastic views of the city. Turner visited Blackford Hill on 15 August 1831 with Robert Cadell, Sir Walter Scott’s publisher, who had commissioned him to paint the view for Scott’s Poetical Works.1 This sketch appears to show the slope of the hills itself, perhaps with the outline of Edinburgh Castle in the distance to the left. Turner made a highly detailed panoramic sketch of the view towards Edinburgh in the Abbotsford sketchbook, on which his watercolour, Edinburgh from Blackford Hill circa 1832 (whereabouts unknown),2 was closely based (Tate D25939; Turner Bequest CCLXVII 7a).
At the right of the page, drawn with the sketchbook turned to the left, is an unidentified building, probably in Edinburgh, and perhaps seen from the hill.

Thomas Ardill
May 2010

1
General Finley, Landscapes of Memory: Turner as Illustrator to Scott, London 1980, p.137.
2
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.428 no.1082.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Blackford Hill, Edinburgh 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2010, 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-blackford-hill-edinburgh-r1134121, accessed 20 September 2024.