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 Dunollie Castle and the Sound of Kerrera from Gallanach 1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Dunollie Castle and the Sound of Kerrera from Gallanach’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 78 Verso:
Dunollie Castle and the Sound of Kerrera from Gallanach 1831
D26895
Turner Bequest CCLXXIII 78a
Pencil on white wove paper, 116 x 186 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch looks up the Sound of Kerrera to Dunollie Castle from below the Gallanach Cliffs to the south of Oban. The castle stands on a headland towards the left of the sketch with Oban Bay and a sailing boat to the right. The Gallanach Cliffs frame the view at the right, and boulders by the shore in the foreground add a sense of distance and depth to the drawing.
The composition suggests that Turner may have been familiar with William Daniell’s aquatint, Dunolly Castle, Near Oban, Argyllshire (Tate T02791) published as part of his A Voyage Found Great Britain (1814–25), as that shows the castle from the same angle with beach and boulders in the foreground. Turner, however, took sketches of the castle from a number of different viewpoints and experimented with numerous compositions, although none of these were worked up into a painting (see folio 95; D26928).

Thomas Ardill
February 2010

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Dunollie Castle and the Sound of Kerrera from Gallanach 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-dunollie-castle-and-the-sound-of-kerrera-from-gallanach-r1135252, accessed 25 April 2024.