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 Old Nave of Dunfermline Abbey Church 1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Old Nave of Dunfermline Abbey Church’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 7 Verso:
The Old Nave of Dunfermline Abbey Church 1831
D26449
Turner Bequest CCLXX 7a
Pencil on white wove paper, 125 x 201 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch depicts the interior of Dunfermline Abbey Church, and shows a view west along the old nave, which since the 1821 extension has been the vestibule. The quick sketch is fairly perfunctory but does include details of architecture and mouldings, such as the fan vaulting at the top left, the stripe and chevron design pillars at the right (see folio 7; D26448),1 and the capitals.
There are also two sketches of parts of doorways. At the bottom right is a sketch of the arched west door to the church, and at the bottom left is part of the door in one of the transepts.
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
David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan write that these are in fact to the south of the nave not the north as shown here, though the design is similar on both sides; Wallace-Hadrill and Carolan 1990, p.15.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘The Old Nave of Dunfermline Abbey Church 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-old-nave-of-dunfermline-abbey-church-r1134883, accessed 26 April 2024.