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; Sketches of Loch Linnhe Continued 1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Clamshell Cave, Staffa; Sketches of Loch Linnhe Continued’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 39 Recto:
?Clamshell Cave, Staffa; Sketches of Loch Linnhe Continued 1831
D26815
Turner Bequest CCLXXIII 39
Pencil on white wove paper, 116 x 186 mm
Inscribed in blue ink by John Ruskin ‘39’ top left running vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXIII 39’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The main sketch on this page, David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan have suggested, may be of Clamshell Cave on the Isle of Staffa.1 If this is correct then it must be a view from the foot of the cave looking up to the cliffs above the cave entrance. The use of jagged, broken lines and shading is consistent with Turner’s style of depicting the layer of basalt rock that sits above the striated, columnar layer for which the island is famous (see, for example, folio 30 verso; D26800). Other sketches of the Clamshell Cave are on folios 30, 34 verso and 35 (D26799, D26806, D26897). However, there are no topographic features in this sketch that can confirm the identification.
At the top left of the page, drawn with the sketchbook turned to the right, is a small study of Castle Stalker on Loch Linnhe near Port Appin. The drawing was made at the same time as three further studies on folio 38 verso (D26814). Also at the bottom of the page is the continuation of four of the sketches of Loch Linnhe from folio 38 verso.

Thomas Ardill
March 2010

1
David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan, ‘Turner on Mull and Staffa, 1831’, [circa 1991], Tate catalogue files, [folios 8, 18].

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘?Clamshell Cave, Staffa; Sketches of Loch Linnhe Continued 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-sketches-of-loch-linnhe-continued-r1135173, accessed 26 April 2024.