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

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

Joseph Mallord William Turner Kinnoull Tower and Kinfauns Castle, near Perth 1834

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Kinnoull Tower and Kinfauns Castle, near Perth’ 1834
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 28 Verso:
Kinnoull Tower and Kinfauns Castle, near Perth 1834
D26723
Turner Bequest CCLXXII 30a
Pencil on off-white wove paper, 119 x 184 mm
Inscribed in pencil by an unknown hand ‘[...]4’ top right inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Continued from folio 29 (D26721; CCLXXII 29a), this is one half of a view along the River Tay with Kinfauns Castle (folio 29) and Kinnoull Tower (present page) seen from the south-east. The tower is seen at the right of the page, perched on the steep southern slope of Kinnoull Hill to the east of Perth. There are further views of the tower from the south-east on folios 27 verso and 30 (D26724, D26747; CCLXXII 31), and views from the south-west on folios 30 and 30 verso (D26746; CCLXXII 42).
It is interesting to note that Kinnoull Tower was apparently built in the eighteenth century as a folly, in imitation of the castles on the River Rhine.1 Turner drew many such towers on his tours of the Rhine in 1802 and 1817 and in the 1830s and 1840s.2

Thomas Ardill
October 2010

1
‘Kinnoull Hill’, The Forestry Commission, accessed 25 October 2010, http://www.forestry.gov.uk/website/recreation.nsf/LUWebDocsByKey/ScotlandPerthandKinrossKinnoullHillWoodlandParkKinnoullHill.
2
Dr Cecilia Powell, ‘Rhine’, Evelyn Joll, Martin Butlin and Luke Herrmann (eds.), The Oxford Companion to J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 2001, pp.261–2.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Kinnoull Tower and Kinfauns Castle, near Perth 1834 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 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-kinnoull-tower-and-kinfauns-castle-near-perth-r1136421, accessed 19 September 2024.