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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Glen Bruar: The Middle Fall 1801

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Glen Bruar: The Middle Fall 1801
D03413
Turner Bequest LVIII 34
Pencil and gouache on white wove paper prepared with a grey–buff wash, 480 x 344 mm
Stamped in black ‘LVIII – 34’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The identification of this and Tate D03412 (Turner Bequest LVIII 33) is due to landscape historian Christopher Dingwall;1 another very plausible suggestion, from Greg Damery,2 is that the waterfall is that on the Keltney Burn near Coshieville, which Turner passed through on his way north from Kenmore to Tummel Bridge; see the 1801 Scotch Lakes sketchbook (Tate D03114–D03115; Turner Bequest LVI 102a–103).
However, the fact that Turner chose to draw the fall twice in some detail in the larger format of the ‘Scottish Pencils’ suggests that he had space to work at leisure, which was more probably the case at Bruar than in the enclosed and precipitous setting of the Keltney Burn.
1
Author of The Falls of Bruar: A Garden in the Wild, Dundee 1987; personal communication.
2
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-r1179813, accessed 29 March 2024.