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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Scotland 1801-10 > Scotch Lakes Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Ben Cruachan and Loch Awe from above Cladich 1801

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Ben Cruachan and Loch Awe from above Cladich’ 1801
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 47 Recto:
Ben Cruachan and Loch Awe from above Cladich 1801
D03000
Turner Bequest LVI 45
Pencil on white wove paper, 184 x 114 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Carewdenben Mountains’ at bottom
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘45’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘LVI – 45’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is a continuation of the subject on folio 44 verso (D02999). The inscription presumably refers to Ben Cruachan, the mountain that rears up above the north eastern end of Loch Awe, and which Turner included in the title of his watercolour Kilchern Castle, with the Cruchan Ben Mountains, Scotland: Noon, shown at the Royal Academy in 1802. Although this has traditionally been identified with the watercolour of Loch Awe with a rainbow in Plymouth City Art Gallery and Museum,1 the present author has proposed that the work in question is a lost watercolour2 engraved by William Miller in 1847 (Tate impression: T05813).3
This sketchbook includes a long sequence of drawings of Loch Awe, many including the castle, of which that on folios 59 verso–60 recto (D03025–D03026; Turner Bequest LVI 57a–58) seems to have supplied the principal features of the view in the watercolour.
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.339 no.344, pl.55.
2
Ibid., no.345.
3
See Andrew Wilton in Wilton, Inge Bodesohn-Vogel and Helena Robinson, William Turner: Licht und Farbe, exhibition catalogue, Museum Folkwang, Essen 2001, p.285 under no.29.
Technical notes:
There is a 10 mm tear at the centre of the outer edge.

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Ben Cruachan and Loch Awe from above Cladich 1801 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-ben-cruachan-and-loch-awe-from-above-cladich-r1179195, accessed 25 April 2024.