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 Heriot's Hospital, Edinburgh: The Clock Tower and Entrance 1834

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Heriot's Hospital, Edinburgh: The Clock Tower and Entrance’ 1834
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 78 Recto:
Heriot’s Hospital, Edinburgh: The Clock Tower and Entrance 1834
D26243
Turner Bequest CCLXVIII 78
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 181 mm
Inscribed in red ink by John Ruskin ‘78’ top right running vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLXVIII –78’ top right running vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The clock tower of Heriot’s Hospital school is isolated and studied in close detail in this sketch, made on 1 October 1834.1 The tower is located at the centre of the northern façade, with the main entrance to the school below. As in his study of the building from the south-east (folio 81; D26247), Turner has drawn the architecture in precise detail. He has economised, however, by drawing only part of the rest of the building, which is fairly symmetrical. Again, the artist has struggled a little with the steeple, which is drawn with much less confidence than the rest of the building; Turner also repositioned the steeple in his sketch on folio 81.
This study is similar to a sketch that Turner made of the building in 1818: Tate D13447 (Turner Bequest CLXV 68).
For further sketches of Heriot’s Hospital, see folio 81.

Thomas Ardill
November 2010

1
Gerald Finley, Landscapes of Memory: Turner as Illustrator to Scott, London 1980, pp.182, 258 note 46.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Heriot’s Hospital, Edinburgh: The Clock Tower and Entrance 1834 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 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-heriots-hospital-edinburgh-the-clock-tower-and-entrance-r1136171, accessed 18 April 2024.