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 1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Ben Venue, From Across Loch Katrine’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 36 Recto:
Ben Venue, From Across Loch Katrine 1831
D26506
Turner Bequest CCLXX 36
Pencil on white wove paper, 125 x 201 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ?‘main | Gt Red’ top centre
Inscribed in red ink by John Ruskin ‘36’ top right running vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLXX – 36’ top right running vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
From the eastern end of the north shore of Loch Katrine, this sketch looks across the loch to Ben Venue with Ellen’s Island (Eilean Molach). The sketch is very similar to another view on folio 35 verso (D26505), and there are several further sketches of the same view in this sketchbook, including the drawing on folio 47 (D26528), which formed the basis of Turner’s watercolour Loch Katrine circa 1832 (British Museum),1 engraved to illustrate volume 8 of Sir Walter Scott’s Poetical Works, The Lady of the Lake in 1834. (See folio 47 for further references).
At the top of the page is another sketch that David Wallace-Hadrill has suggested is probably of Loch Katrine,2 although he has not been able to decipher Turner’s inscriptions. The view may look west up the loch from the same place as the previous sketch.

Thomas Ardill
October 2009

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.1084 no.1084.
2
David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan, ‘Turner Round the Clyde and in Islay – 1831’, 1991, Tate catalogue files, folio 3.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Ben Venue, From Across Loch Katrine 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-r1134940, accessed 23 September 2024.