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

Surrounding a sketch of Loch Long across the centre of this page are views of the villages of Bowling and Old Kilpatrick on the Clyde near Glasgow. The sketch at the top left of the page is labelled ‘Bowl’. According to David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan,1 it may show a canal lock and lock-keeper’s cottage on the canal at Bowling, with the Kilpatrick Hills in the background. A sketch at the top right, and another at the bottom-left, are of Old Kilpatrick Church with the Kilpatrick Hills beyond. These were made either from the Clyde Canal, or the River Clyde, either of which Turner may have streamed along to reach Dumbarton.

Although Wallace-Hadrill and Carolan assume that Turner sketched Bowling and Old Kilpatrick before visiting Loch Long,2 the fact that the sketches of these two villages are squeezed above and below a sketch of the loch suggests that he may have returned there after that trip.

The view of Loch Long apparently includes Argyll’s Bowling Green at the left.3 This is a name for the mountainous peninsula that divides Lochs Goil and Long. The view therefore looks towards the mouth of Loch Goil from Loch Long to the east. Wallace-Hadrill and Carolan compare the sketch to another in the Stirling and the West sketchbook (Tate D26469; Turner Bequest CCLXX 17a), although it is in fact closer to the two sketches on the opposite page (Tate D26470; Turner Bequest CCLXX 18), though made from a little further to the south. There is another sketch of Loch Long on folio 15 verso of the current sketchbook (D26648).