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 Ben Venue From Across Loch Katrine; and the Lead Mine Near Ballygrant, Islay 1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Ben Venue From Across Loch Katrine; and the Lead Mine Near Ballygrant, Islay’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 31 Recto:
Ben Venue From Across Loch Katrine; and the Lead Mine Near Ballygrant, Islay 1831
D26496
Turner Bequest CCLXX 31
Pencil on white wove paper, 125 x 201 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Balygrant | Islay’ top right inverted
Inscribed in red ink by John Ruskin ‘31’ top right running vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLXX – 31’ top right running vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The larger sketch on this page is of Ben Venue from Loch Katrine. The sketch was made from somewhere around the foot of Ben A’an on the north shore of the loch at its east end. The slope of the mountain is recognisable from several similar sketches in this book, most notably on folio 45 verso (D26525). This shows a more highly worked up study of the mountain and loch, from perhaps slightly west of the position where Turner made the current sketch.
With the sketchbook inverted at the fore-edge of the page is a sketch inscribed ‘Balygrant | Islay’, which David Wallace-Hadrill has suggested may show the engine houses at the lead mine of Mulreesh near Ballygrant on the island of Islay. See folio 37 verso (D26509) for information on Turner’s visit to Islay).1

Thomas Ardill
October 2009

1
David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan, ‘Turner Round the Clyde and in Islay – 1831’, 1991, Tate catalogue files, folio 2.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Ben Venue From Across Loch Katrine; and the Lead Mine Near Ballygrant, Islay 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 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-ben-venue-from-across-loch-katrine-and-the-lead-mine-near-r1134930, accessed 16 April 2024.