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

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

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inverness from Castle Hill, Looking North 1831

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inverness from Castle Hill, Looking North’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 3 Verso:
Inverness from Castle Hill, Looking North 1831
D27049
Turner Bequest CCLXXVII 3a
Pencil on off-white wove paper, 104 x 163 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This view of Inverness was (as David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan have pointed out) made from the top of Castle Hill,1 although the hill was empty at the time with the old castle having been demolished in 1749 and the new castle not yet built. The sketch shows a northerly view up the River Ness with the Old Ness Bridge. In the centre is the tower of the Old High Church (of Kirk), with the faint outline of the Tollbooth Steeple in the foreground at the right. The view is similar to the one that William Daniell produced for his A Voyage Round Great Britain: Inverness 1821 (aquatint, Tate T02894), which Turner is likely to have seen. There is a view from the same spot but looking south on the following page of this sketchbook, folio 4 (D27050).
For further information on Turner’s sketches of Inverness see folio 2 (D27047).

Thomas Ardill
April 2010

1
David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan, ‘Sketchbook CCLXXVII Inverness’, [circa 1991], Tate catalogue files, [unpaginated].

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Inverness from Castle Hill, Looking North 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-inverness-from-castle-hill-looking-north-r1135415, accessed 26 April 2024.