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

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

Joseph Mallord William Turner Sir Walter Scott's Study at Abbotsford 1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Sir Walter Scott's Study at Abbotsford’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 64 Verso:
Sir Walter Scott’s Study at Abbotsford 1831
D26041
Turner Bequest CCLXVII 66a
Pencil on off-white wove writing paper, 113 x 185 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sketchbook inverted is a sketch of Sir Walter Scott’s study at Abbotsford. The view is from the doorway to the entrance hall at the west side of the study. Although Turner’s sketch is quite rough, it is possible to identify parts of it thanks to a highly wrought drawing of the study from the same angle by William Allan, made just a year later (National Gallery of Scotland, 1832).1
At the centre of the room is Scott’s desk, a writing table designed by Gillow,2 probably with a chair in front of it and another chair to the left. These are presumably the two chairs shown in Allan’s picture and illustrated in Wainwright’s book.3 Behind the desk in Allan’s picture is a large court cupboard, and this may also be suggested in Turner’s sketch. Above this Turner has indicated the railings of the gallery that runs around three sides of the room. At the right of the room, on top of another cupboard in Allan and Turner’s sketches, is a bust.
Turner made a number of sketches of the interior and exterior of Abbotsford. (See folio 62 verso for references; D26037; CCLXVII 64a).

Thomas Ardill
September 2009

1
Clive Wainwright, The Romantic Interior: the British Collector at Home, 1750–1850, London 1989, p.195 reproduced pl.162 [reproduced upside down].
2
Ibid., pp.193, 197.
3
Ibid., pp.197–198.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Sir Walter Scott’s Study at Abbotsford 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-sir-walter-scotts-study-at-abbotsford-r1134409, accessed 23 April 2024.