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 Edinburgh, The Royal Mile 1834

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Edinburgh, The Royal Mile’ 1834
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 53 Verso:
Edinburgh, The Royal Mile 1834
D26199
Turner Bequest CCLXVIII 53a
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 181 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
David Wallace-Hadrill has suggested that this sketch is of the town of Melrose,1 presumably because there is a sketch of Melrose Abbey on the reverse of this page: folio 53 (D26198). If we follow this suggestion, a view north-west along the High Street from the Market Square is plausible, because the road slopes downwards (as in the sketch), and looks towards the hills around Gattonside, which in the sketch seem about the right height and shape.
Considering similar looking sketches elsewhere in this sketchbook, however, a more likely explanation is perhaps a view east down Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. See folio 1 verso (D26096; CCLXVIII 1) for references to various sketches of the Royal Mile in this sketchbook.

Thomas Ardill
January 2011

1
David Wallace-Hadrill, ‘1831 | 1834’, [circa 1991], Tate catalogue files.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Edinburgh, The Royal Mile 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-edinburgh-the-royal-mile-r1136127, accessed 21 September 2024.