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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Staffa: The Entrance to Fingal's Cave 1831

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 20 Verso:
Staffa: The Entrance to Fingal’s Cave 1831
D26781
Turner Bequest CCLXXIII 20a
Pencil on white wove paper, 116 x 186 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Made as Turner approached the rocky landing point at the south of the Isle of Staffa, this sketch looks north-west towards the southern tip of the island, with the opening of Fingal’s Cave indicated by the arch of the opening and shading beneath. Although he reached Staffa from Tobermory by steamboat, Turner would have landed from a small ship’s boat which seems to have approached from the south-east. The sketch indicates how precarious the landing is, just a strip of rock which the boat’s captain had to be careful not to crash against, and which Turner recalled having to ‘scrabble over’ to reach the cave. No wonder that while ‘some got into Fingal’s Cave, others would not.’1 In this sketch Turner has observed the basalt columns that make up the walls of the cave and form a layer like a belt round the island. At the far right is the outline of the pyramidal rock called Am Buachaille (or the Herdsman). There are further sketches of Staffa from the south-east on folio 21 (D26782).
This sketch belongs to a sequence charting Turner’s journey down the western side of the island and around the southern point to the entrance of the cave: folios 18 verso–24 verso and 27 verso–28 (D26777–D26788, D26794–D26795).
For references to all of Turner’s sketches of Staffa and Fingal’s Cave see folio 40 (D26817).

Thomas Ardill
March 2010

1
Turner to James Lenox, 16 August 1845, in Gage, Collected Correspondence of J.M.W. Turner with an Early Diary and a Memoir by George Jones, Oxford 1980, pp.209–10 letter 288.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Staffa: The Entrance to Fingal’s Cave 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 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-staffa-the-entrance-to-fingals-cave-r1135139, accessed 20 September 2024.