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 Dunstaffnage Castle and Loch Etive 1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Dunstaffnage Castle and Loch Etive’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 97 Verso:
Dunstaffnage Castle and Loch Etive 1831
D26935
Turner Bequest CCLXXIII 98a
Pencil on white wove paper, 186 x 116 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Loch Etive’ lower centre
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The four sketches on this page were all made around Dunstaffnage Bay and Dunstaffnage Castle. The top two sketches show a view of the castle from across the bay to the south. The top sketch was made from just north of Dunbeg (formerly Dunstaffnage) village and looks past trees to the left, towards the Bay and Castle. The view is similar to the main sketch on folio 97 (D26934; CCLXXIII 98) which also includes a boat at anchor in the harbour. The same boat appears in the third sketch, which is labelled ‘Loch Etive’ and depicts a view east up the loch with the road to Connel (on which Turner must have been standing) at the right.
At the bottom of the page is a rough sketch of ruins which David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan have suggested may again be Dunstaffnage.1 Although the sketch is too slight to make identification certain, it could be the south-west elevation, making the mountains beyond the Morverns.
For a full list of Turner’s sketches of Dunstaffnage see folio 89 (D26916).

Thomas Ardill
January 2010

1
Wallace-Hadrill and Carolan 1991, p.29 as ‘CCLXXIII 97a (4)’.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Dunstaffnage Castle and Loch Etive 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 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-dunstaffnage-castle-and-loch-etive-r1135290, accessed 26 April 2024.