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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Scotland 1834 > Edinburgh Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Selkirk 1834

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Selkirk’ 1834
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 41 Recto:
Selkirk 1834
D26174
Turner Bequest CCLXVIII 41
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 181 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘P Haugh’ centre and P.H. bottom
Inscribed in red ink by John Ruskin ‘41’ top right running vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLXVIII – 41’ top right running vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner divided this page in half horizontally for two sketches of Selkirk from the west side of the Ettrick Water. The top sketch looks north-east along the road on which Turner was travelling and across the water to Selkirk, with Selkirk Bridge in the foreground and the Town Hall prominent in the centre of the town above it. This is very similar to the view on folio 40 verso (D26173). Beneath is a sketch made from a few hundred metres further along the road, so that we now look east across the bridge to the town. To the right of each sketch Turner has made two separate studies of the spire of the tower of Selkirk Town Hall.
The two inscriptions on this page, ‘P. Haugh’ and ‘P.H’, probably refer to Philiphaugh, a settlement and the site of a seventeenth-century battlefield shown in the foreground of Turner’s drawing.
There are further sketches of Selkirk on folio 40, 41 verso and 42 (D26172, D26175, D26176).
There is a light brown stain at the top centre-left of the page.

Thomas Ardill
January 2011

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Selkirk 1834 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2011, 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-selkirk-r1136102, accessed 22 September 2024.