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

These sketches were made as the boat that brought Turner from Tobermory to Oban was entering The Firth of Lorn from the Sound of Mull (see folio 48; D26833 for details of this journey). At the top left is a sketch of Duart Castle at the mouth of the Sound, as seen from the north-east. Turner had made sketches in the Sound of Mull no.1 sketchbook of the castle as he steamed past on his outward journey from Oban to Skye (Tate D26943–D26945; Turner Bequest CCLXXIV 4a–5a), but he must have got a closer look on his return as the current sketch is much more exact in its record of the architecture (see D26945 for comparison). There are further sketches of Duart Castle in this sketchbook on folios 56 and 57 verso (D26850, D26853).

The Duart Castle sketch overlaps slightly with the sketch drawn at the upper right of the page. Inscribed ‘woody mound’, this matches the shape of the headland at the mouth of the Sound of Mull on the Morvern side, Rubha an Ridire, as seen from mouth of the Sound.

David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan have suggested that the sketch across the lower half of the page is either a view up the Sound of Mull, or a view of Loch Linnhe.1 The latter suggestion is the most compelling, as the right bank is perhaps too hilly to be the Morvern coast, but is a reasonable fit for the Argyll coast as seen from the south.

As Turner’s boat crossed the Firth of Lorn on its way to Oban the artist continued sketching on folio 56 (D26850).