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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Scotland 1831 > Staffa Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Clamshell Cave, Staffa 1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Clamshell Cave, Staffa’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 30 Recto:
Clamshell Cave, Staffa 1831
D26799
Turner Bequest CCLXXIII 30
Pencil on white wove paper, 116 x 186 mm
Inscribed in blue ink by John Ruskin ‘30’ bottom right descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXIII 30’ bottom left descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Although he made no mention of it in his letter to James Lenox which described his trip to Staffa,1 Turner seems to have visited the Clamshell Cave as well as the more famous Fingal’s Cave during his hour on the island of Staffa: see also folios 34 verso, 35 and 39 (D36806, D26807, D26815). Just to the south of the dramatic entrance to the cave is a curved ridge of columnar basalt that gives the appearance of the ribs of a ship or, in this sketch, a frozen wave. To the left of this ridge Turner has represented the mouth of the cave with a scribbled area of shading. To the left is a triangular rock called Am Buachaille (or the Herdsman’s Rock). The island in the distance at the left may be Iona. William Daniell published a similar view in his A Journey Round Great Britain (1814–25): Clam-Shell Cave, Staffa, Iona in the Distance, (aquatint, Tate T02793).
For references to further sketches of Staffa see folio 40 (D26817).
At the centre of the page is a red-brown mark. A looping pencil line seems to cut through the top of the mark, suggesting that it was already on the page before Turner drew the sketch.

Thomas Ardill
March 2010

1
John 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, Turner to James Lenox, 16 August 1845.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Clamshell Cave, Staffa 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-clamshell-cave-staffa-r1135157, accessed 25 April 2024.