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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Scotland 1831 > Inverness Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inverness, Looking South Down the River Ness 1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inverness, Looking South Down the River Ness’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 6 Verso:
Inverness, Looking South Down the River Ness 1831
D27055
Turner Bequest CCLXXVII 6a
Pencil on off-white wove paper, 104 x 163 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘mid’ bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverness is seen here from the north towards the mouth of the River Ness. The tower at the left is known as Cromwell’s Tower on Cromwell Road, once thought to have been part of Cromwell’s Fort in the citadel of Inverness, but now known to be an eighteenth-century structure.1 Turner also made a small sketch of this tower in the Fort Augustus sketchbook (Tate D26967; Turner Bequest CCLXXVI 2). The two spires at the centre of the sketch belong to the Tollbooth and the Old High Church. At the right a wooden trestle bridge spans the river. This is the Black Bridge, which has since been replaced by Waterloo Bridge. At the very right of the sketch is Tomnahurich, the hill upon which Inverness cemetery is built. The hill is shown again in a larger sketch at the very bottom of the page in the page gutter. There is a similar view of Inverness on folio 5 verso (D27053).
See folio 2 (D27047) for more information on Turner’s sketches of Inverness.

Thomas Ardill
April 2010

1
David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan, ‘Sketchbook CCLXXVII Inverness’, [circa 1991], Tate catalogue files, [unpaginated]. ‘Inverness, Cromwell Road, Clock Tower’, Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, accessed 28 April 2010, http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/site/13349/details/inverness+cromwell+road+clock+tower/.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Inverness, Looking South Down the River Ness 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2010, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inverness-looking-south-down-the-river-ness-r1135421, accessed 18 May 2024.