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

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J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Scotland 1831 > Sheets Associated with the 1831 Tour of ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Fingal's Cave, Staffa 1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Fingal's Cave, Staffa’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Fingal’s Cave, Staffa 1831
D34015
Turner Bequest CCCXLI 297
Pencil on light grey wove paper, 153 x 233 mm
Inscribed in pencil ‘297’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCXLI – 297’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
In 2010 Thomas Ardill catalogued two drawings of Fingal’s Cave on similar grey paper (Tate D34001, D34002; Turner Bequest CCCXLI 284, 285), relating them to views in Turner’s Staffa sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest CCLXXIII). The present work and Tate D34016 (Turner Bequest CCCXLI 298) have since been identified as the same subject, possibly (as Ardill suggests) worked up in the studio while preparing the watercolour Fingal’s Cave, Staffa (currently untraced)1 for Sir Walter Scott’s Poetical Works, engraved as the title page vignette of The Lord of the Isles (1834; Tate impression: T04958).

The present drawing is so loose that although the shafts and ends of the cave’s basalt columns are evident, its orientation is uncertain. It does not seem to relate directly to any of the Staffa sketches, but compare Tate D26795–D26798 and D26800 (Turner Bequest CCLXXIII 28, 28a, 29, 29a, 30a), showing the interior.
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.429 no.1089, reproduced.
Verso:
Blank; some water staining, possibly from the 1928 Tate Gallery flood. Inscribed in pencil ‘241 | O’ and ‘297’ bottom right.

Matthew Imms
September 2016

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Fingal’s Cave, Staffa 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2016, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, October 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-fingals-cave-staffa-r1182322, accessed 24 April 2024.