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

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

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Frater Hall of Dunfermline Abbey 1831

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Frater Hall of Dunfermline Abbey’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 2 Recto:
The Frater Hall of Dunfermline Abbey 1831
D26438
Turner Bequest CCLXX 2
Pencil on white wove paper, 125 x 201 mm
Inscribed in red ink by John Ruskin ‘2’ bottom left descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLXX – 2’ bottom left descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch has been identified as depicting the ruins of the Frater range of Dunfermline Abbey.1 The building is seen from the north-west with the west window at the centre, the buttressed north wall at the left and the arched entrance called the Pends to the right. The sketch at the bottom left of the page shows the tracery of the west window, and to the right is a sketch of the coat of arms of James V and Mary of Guise, a carving of which was set into the wall beneath the west window. There is a view from the opposite side of the Frater range on the reverse of this page (folio 2 verso; D26439).
Turner visited Dunfermline on his way from Edinburgh to Stirling in 1831 and later used his sketches as the basis for an illustration to a new edition of Sir Walter Scott’s Tales of a Grandfather. See folio 3 verso (D26441) for details and references to further sketches.

Thomas Ardill
June 2010

1
Wallace-Hadrill and Carolan 1990, p.14.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘The Frater Hall of Dunfermline Abbey 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 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-the-frater-hall-of-dunfermline-abbey-r1134872, accessed 24 April 2024.