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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Scotland 1831 > Sheets Associated with the 1831 Tour of ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Glen Glass, Near Evanton, Ross-shire 1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Glen Glass, Near Evanton, Ross-shire’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Glen Glass, Near Evanton, Ross-shire 1831
D34791
Turner Bequest CCCXLIV d 324
Pencil on off-white laid paper, 163 x 200 mm
Inscribed in red ink by John Ruskin ‘324’ bottom-right
Stamped in black ‘CCCXLIV 324’ bottom-right
Blindstamped with the Turner Bequest stamp lower-right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sheet is associated with a short series of sketches of the Black Rock Gorge and Glen Glass, which lie about a mile west of Evanton in Ross-shire. The group of five or six sheets of off-white lined writing paper were made at Carron Mill at Denny, Stirling: Tate D34791–D32797, D34848 and perhaps D34857 (Turner Bequest CCCXLIV d 324–327, 361, 369).1 Another sketch on a different type of paper may also be of the area: Tate D34836 (CCCXLIV 353). Turner visited the dramatic gorge and glen while staying with Hugh Munro at Novar House in September 1831. See Sheets Associated with the 1831 Tour of Scotland Group Introduction.
The sketch shows a broad stream of rapidly moving water with a hill behind. A figure stands by the water’s edge and is perhaps fishing. This must have been made from the glen, as the gorge is very deep and just a few metres wide. The hill is likely be Meall an Tuirc on the northern side of the glen. Turner was probably accompanied on his visit by Munro, who may be the figure in the sketch, and in D34792.
1
The sketch was identified in the unpublished notes by David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan for an essay published in 1994: ‘Turner at Novar House, Evanton’, [circa 1994], Tate catalogue files. The paper was identified by Peter Bower, see David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan, ‘Turner at Novar House, Evanton, 1831’, Turner Society News, no.68, December 1994, p.15.
Verso:
Blank except for an inscription in an unknown hand, ‘2.324’ bottom left.

Thomas Ardill
May 2010

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Glen Glass, Near Evanton, Ross-shire 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-glen-glass-near-evanton-ross-shire-r1135597, accessed 25 April 2024.