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

Drawn with the sketchbook inverted and continuing at the left on folio 33 (D27024) is a sketch of a gorge with a loch in the background. Rather than the Falls of Foyers, which are depicted about twenty times in this sketchbook (see folio 40 verso; D27034 for references), David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan have suggested that this sketch may be of the Pass of Inverfarigaig to the north-east of Foyers.1 The pass runs east from Inverfarigaig on the coast of Loch Ness to Loch Mhor, and this view may have been made from about halfway up the glen looking east towards the loch. The same view is depicted on folio 32 (D27022), and Wallace-Hadrill and Carolan have suggested that folio 24 verso (D27009) depicts the same view, although it has been identified by the present author as the Lower Falls at Foyers.

The identification of this sketch as Inverfarigaig is not certain, and it is therefore perhaps not enough to confirm that Turner visited the pass. A sketch of Boleskine Burial Ground has been identified (folio 27; D27014), however, which demonstrates that the artist walked at least half the way to Inverfarigaig from Foyers.