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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Scotland 1831 > Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?Naworth Castle 1831

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Naworth Castle’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 29 Recto:
?Naworth Castle 1831
D25817
Turner Bequest CCLXVI 29
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 187 mm
Inscribed in blue ink by John Ruskin ‘29’ top right and ‘342’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXVI 29’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
During the last few days of July 1831 Turner was around Penrith making sketches in preparation for illustrations to Sir Walter Scott’s Poetical Works.1 The list of possible suggestions that he was working from had been drawn up in March and sent to him on 1 April that year, and included a number of suggestions that were later dropped.2 One of these was Naworth Castle, a site that may have interested Sir Walter Scott because of the plot by its one-time owner Thomas Howard to marry Mary Queen of Scots.
Naworth is situated near the town of Brampton, about thirteen miles north-east of Carlisle. This constitutes a detour from Turner’s route between Carlisle and the western Scottish Border, and explains why there are sketches of nearby Walton in the Rokeby and Appleby sketchbook (Tate D25605; Turner Bequest CCLXIV 42).
The two sketches on this page may represent Naworth Castle. At the top of the page is a view of Castle Beck which splits at the western corner of the castle, with the northern side of the castle on the right bank. Above the trees is the tower at the north-west of the quadrangle, with part of the Dacre Tower behind it.
Beneath this is a sketch of the fourteenth-century Dacre Tower which was added to the manor house when it was crenellated by Ranulph Dacre in 1335. The view is taken from across Castle Beck just to the north-east of the castle. The original castle was largely destroyed by fire in 1844 with reconstruction work beginning in the 1850s.3
At the left of the page is the continuation from folio 28 verso (D25816) of a sketch of King Arthur’s Round Table near Penrith.

Thomas Ardill
September 2009

1
Turner arrived in Penrith on 28 July 1931, see Gerald Finley, Landscapes of Memory: Turner as Illustrator to Scott, London 1980, p.91.
2
Finley 1980, p.243.
3
‘The History of Naworth’, Naworth Castle, accessed 14 April 2009, http://www.naworth.co.uk/history2_new.htm.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘?Naworth Castle 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-naworth-castle-r1134184, accessed 19 September 2024.