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 Oban Bay, with Groups of Figures 1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Oban Bay, with Groups of Figures’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 59 Recto:
Oban Bay, with Groups of Figures 1831
D26856
Turner Bequest CCLXXIII 59
Pencil on white wove paper, 116 x 186 mm
Inscribed in blue ink by John Ruskin ‘59’ top left running vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXIII 59’ top right running vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Drawn on the pier at Oban, this sketch looks north across Oban Bay to Dunollie Castle (see folio 58; D26854) with a crowd of people getting on or off two steamers that are moored along the quay. The people include two figures with shoulder belts (baldrics), suggesting that they are in military uniform. Other figures are less distinct, though there is at least one female figure and several of the men wear Tam O’Shanter bonnets.
Turner himself boarded steamers at Oban which he used as a base to explore the islands of Skye, Mull, and Staffa, before departing by steamer for Inverness via Fort William. David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan speculate that one of the steamboats (identifiable by their funnels) may be ‘the little 52-ton Maid of Morven which was to take Turner to Staffa’.1 However, elsewhere in their notes they suggest that the sketch may have been made on Turner’s return from touring the Western Isles before departing for Inverness,2 as the sketch follows a series that record a journey east down the Sound of Mull from Tobermory (folios 48–57; D26833–D26852). Whenever the sketch was made, Turner captures the excitement of a trip to the remote western islands of Scotland.
Further studies of boats and figures at Oban are on folios 58–59 verso (D26854–D26857; CCLXXIII 58–59a).

Thomas Ardill
February 2010

1
David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan, ‘Turner in Argyll in 1831: Inveraray to Oban’, Turner Studies, vol. 11, no.1, Summer 1991, p.25.
2
David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan, ‘Turner on Mull and Staffa, 1831’ (unpublished manuscript), [circa 1991], Tate catalogue files, folio 16.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Oban Bay, with Groups of Figures 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 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-oban-bay-with-groups-of-figures-r1135213, accessed 26 April 2024.