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 ?Dunkeld House and the River Tay, Looking towards Craigie Barns 1801

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Dunkeld House and the River Tay, Looking towards Craigie Barns’ 1801
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
?Dunkeld House and the River Tay, Looking towards Craigie Barns 1801
D03424
Turner Bequest LVIII 45
Pencil and gouache on white wove paper prepared with a grey–buff wash, 290 x 433 mm
Stamped in black ‘LVIII – 45’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is one of the most beautiful of the ‘Scottish Pencils’, but its subject has yet to be confirmed. It has been suggested that the house glimpsed between the trees at the right is Monzie Castle, but Turner’s schematic representation of the building does not bear this out; nor is the conformation of the valley very like. Compare the 1801 Scotch Lakes sketchbook (Tate D03189–D03192; Turner Bequest LVI 141a–142, 142a–143).
The evocation of scale and distance, with the careful placing of the trees as a partial screen, anticipates ‘house portrait’ compositions of a later period, such as The Vale of Ashburnham, a watercolour executed for Cooke’s Views in Sussex in 1816 (British Museum, London).1
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.348 no.425, pl.126.
Verso:
Blank

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘?Dunkeld House and the River Tay, Looking towards Craigie Barns 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-dunkeld-house-and-the-river-tay-looking-towards-craigie-r1179821, accessed 26 April 2024.