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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Scotland 1831 > Fort Augustus Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Foyers Lower Fall 1831

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Foyers Lower Fall’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 25 Verso:
Foyers Lower Fall 1831
D27011
Turner Bequest CCLXXVI 25a
Pencil on off-white laid writing paper, 179 x 150 mm irregular
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch, drawn with the sketchbook inverted from the conventional orientation (the page gutter is at the left), depicts one of the waterfalls at Foyers on the eastern shore of Loch Ness. Considering the subject of the sketch on the opposite page, this too is likely to be a sketch of the more dramatic Lower Fall, plunging down the fifty-metre drop and bubbling in the pool below.
David Wallace-Hadrill, who identified many of Turner’s sketches of the falls, misinterpreted this image, reading it as two sketches drawn with the book turned to the left.1 The orientation of the sketch, however, is revealed by the lollipop-shaped trees at the top of the cliffs, and the column of loops to the left of centre that represent the foaming of the waterfall. There is a similar sketch on folio 25 (D27010), though it was made from the left instead of the right side of the waterfall.
Turner made a number of sketches of the waterfalls from various viewpoints, see folio 40 verso (D27034 for references).

Thomas Ardill
April 2010

1
David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan, ‘Turner’s 1831 Sketchbook T.B. CCLXXVI Fort Augustus’, [circa 1992–3], Tate catalogue files, [unpaginated].

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Foyers Lower Fall 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 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-foyers-lower-fall-r1135376, accessed 26 April 2024.