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

These four sketches, drawn down the page with the sketchbook turned to the right, were all made from a boat on Loch Leven near Kinross.1 The top two sketches both show a view of the castle ruins from the south. The keep is thus at the centre of the island, with the Glassin Tower to the right at the corner of the courtyard. The bottom sketch shows the castle from the east, so that the entrance to the courtyard can be seen in the wall below the castle. The third sketch down depicts, quite roughly, Kinross House. This was a late seventeenth-century mansion built by Sir William Bruce on the western bank of the loch, which was orientated so that it overlooks the castle and was regarded in Bruce’s architectural scheme as a picturesque element.

The sketches were all made from a boat that brought the artist from Kinross to the island, and seem to have partially circled it, allowing Turner to see the ruins from different views. Turner made further sketches from the water, the shore of the loch and from the islands itself elsewhere in this sketchbook and the Stirling and Edinburgh book; see folio 25 verso (D26708; CCLXII 23) for references and more information.