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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Town Beside a River 1831

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 122 Recto:
Town Beside a River 1831
D27191
Turner Bequest CCLXXVII 122
Pencil on off-white wove paper, 104 x 163 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Blue cloud’ upper-centre
Inscribed in red ink by John Ruskin ‘122’ top right running vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXVII 122’ top right running vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This quick sketch depicts a street with a tower at the left, and what are probably the masts of boats to the right. The sun’s orb is shown low in the sky at the centre of the sketch, the effect of which casts the tower and what may be two figures at the right into silhouette. Gerald Wilkinson in 1975 labelled the sketch as Elgin Cathedral,1 an identification that David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan have disagreed with.2 Wallace-Hadrill and Carolan have not managed to provide a firm identification, and Carolan’s suggestion that Turner’s inscription reads ‘Meldrum’,3 a reference to the town Oldmeldrum near Aberdeen, is unlikely as it seems to say ‘Blue cloud’.
A slim possibility is St Machar’s Cathedral in Aberdeen. The cathedral, now a High Kirk, has two steeples, but if it is viewed from the south only one would be seen. This suggestion, however, does not satisfactorily account for the vertical lines to the right which in Turner’s sketches usually represent the masts of boats, as despite there being a river to the north, the River Don is not navigable in a large boat. The low position of the sun in the sky also suggests that the view is looking east or west, rather than north. The identification of the sketch therefore remains uncertain. The tower resembles another sketch on folio 138 verso (D27214).
1
Wilkinson 1975, p.70.
2
David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan, ‘CCLXXVII Inverness Checklist’, [circa 1991], Tate catalogue files, [unpaginated].
3
Ibid.
Verso:
Blank

Thomas Ardill
May 2010

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Town Beside a River 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 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-town-beside-a-river-r1135557, accessed 19 September 2024.