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

Drawn with the sketchbook inverted is the left half of a double-page sketch of Edinburgh from St Anthony’s Chapel in Holyrood Park. The chapel is shown in the foreground of folio 89 verso (D26431) where this sketch continues. The foreground of the present page is taken up with a rocky crag to the west of St Anthony’s Chapel with part of Salisbury Crags framing the left side of the page. The main object of interest on this page is Edinburgh Castle which stands on Castle Rock at the centre of the page with the open-crown spire of St Giles’s Cathedral and the gothic spire of the Tron Kirk to the right. Several arches beneath a horizontal line represent North Bridge to the right of this. At the far right of the page is the column of the Melville Monument.

This is the last in a series of sketches of Edinburgh from St Anthony’s Chapel made in preparation for a watercolour, engraved to illustrate Sir Walter Scott’s Prose Works; see folio 89 verso for further information and references.