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 > The 'Scottish Pencils' > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner View down Loch Awe, with the Slopes of Ben Cruachan on the Right, from Kilchurn Castle 1801

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘View down Loch Awe, with the Slopes of Ben Cruachan on the Right, from Kilchurn Castle’ 1801
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
View down Loch Awe, with the Slopes of Ben Cruachan on the Right, from Kilchurn Castle 1801
D03394
Turner Bequest LVIII 15
Pencil and gouache on white wove paper prepared with a grey–buff wash, 345 x 484 mm
Blind–stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘LVIII – 15’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
A finished watercolour of this subject is in Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery.1 It is uncertain whether that or a lost subject was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1802 (377) as Kilchern Castle, with the Cruchan Ben Mountains, Scotland: Noon (see the 1801 Scotch Lakes sketchbook; Tate D03027; Turner Bequest LVI 58a). However, it seems that the present ‘Scottish Pencil’ drawing shows the view from the castle, without including it. The conspicuous building on an island in the Plymouth watercolour would then probably be a smaller ruined castle on the island of Inistraoch; the lost work based on Tate D03395 (Turner Bequest LVIII 16) is therefore more likely to be that exhibited in 1802.2
The longstanding misidentification of the subject with the exhibited work may have prevented alternative identifications being considered, and the scene depicted may in fact be altogether different: for instance, the large mountain on the right could be Ben More, and the castle Castle Dochart; see Tate D03397 (Turner Bequest LVIII 18).
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.339 no.344, pl.55.
2
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 nos.28 and 29.
Verso:
Blank

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘View down Loch Awe, with the Slopes of Ben Cruachan on the Right, from Kilchurn Castle 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-view-down-loch-awe-with-the-slopes-of-ben-cruachan-on-the-r1179791, accessed 25 April 2024.