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 Glen Bruar: The Middle Fall 1801

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Glen Bruar: The Middle Fall’ 1801
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Glen Bruar: The Middle Fall 1801
D03412
Turner Bequest LVIII 33
Pencil and gouache on white wove paper prepared with a grey–buff wash, 477 x 339 mm
Stamped in black ‘LVIII – 33’ top right, ascending vertically
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
A finished drawing of this subject is Tate D03413 (Turner Bequest LVIII 34). Finberg suggested that the fall was ‘near Blair Athol’,1 presumably thinking of the falls of the Bruar, near Blair Atholl, which were imaginatively landscaped by the 4th Duke of Atholl, following Robert Burns’s lyrical poem, The Humble Petition of Bruar Water to the Noble Duke of Atholl, suggesting that the mountainside be planted with trees. The landscape historian Christopher Dingwall is responsible for confirming that surmise, and for giving the more precise identification of both drawings;2 but see the entry for D03413.
1
Finberg 1909, I, p.156.
2
Author of The Falls of Bruar: A Garden in the Wild, Dundee 1987; personal communication.
Verso:
Blank

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Glen Bruar: The Middle Fall 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-glen-bruar-the-middle-fall-r1179812, accessed 23 April 2024.