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 Ashestiel 1831

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Ashestiel’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 88 Verso:
Ashestiel 1831
D26089
Turner Bequest CCLXVII 90a
Pencil on off-white wove writing paper, 113 x 185 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Drawn with the sketchbook inverted, this page contains the first sketch that Turner made of Ashestiel, and probably the first sketch that he made in this sketchbook. The view was made from ‘a Bank below the road to Peebles’ according to Robert Cadell’s diary entry, which must be at the point where the road from Clovenfold, known as Cliff Road, stops at the road running along the Tweed.1 Behind the house is Ashestiel Hill and at the top of the page Turner has made little sketches of the rooftops of Ashestiel. To the left of this, Turner has made a sketch of the building to the left of Ashetiel, a house built around a peel tower which can be seen at the very left of the vignette that Turner made of the subject: Ashestiel circa 1831–4 (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge).2
The drawing continues slightly onto folio 89 (Tate D26090; CCLXVII 91). For more information and references to other sketches of Ashestiel see folio 88 (Tate D26088; CCLXVII 90).

Thomas Ardill
September 2009

1
Robert Cadell, Abbotsford Diary, Friday 5 August 1831, folios 104–104 verso, National Library of Scotland, MS Acc.5188, Box 1; transcribed in Finley 1972, pp.378–9.
2
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, pp.428–9 no.1083.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Ashestiel 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-ashestiel-r1134457, accessed 14 May 2024.