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 > Scotch Lakes Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Bonshaw Tower from the North 1801

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Bonshaw Tower from the North’ 1801
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 178 Verso:
Bonshaw Tower from the North 1801
D03259
Turner Bequest LVI 176a
Pencil on white wove paper, 184 x 114 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘S M’ below centre, in middle distance of drawing
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The subject is continued on folio 179 recto opposite (D03260; Turner Bequest LVI 177). Solway Firth and the Cumbrian mountains appear in the distance. For other drawings of the tower, see under folio 175 verso (D03253; Turner Bequest LVI 173a).
The initials Turner has added to the drawing presumably stand for ‘Solway Moss’. The drawings on folios 181 verso–183 recto (D03265–D03268; Turner Bequest LVI 179a–181) are labelled ‘Solway Moss’. He was to select this as one of the subjects for his Liber Studiorum, engraved in 1816 (Tate impressions: A01015, A01188), based on another drawing, from the Smaller Fonthill sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest XLVIII, now largely dispersed); see the ‘Architectural and Other Subjects c.1797–1807’ section of this catalogue, where it is listed in the Smaller Fonthill book’s Introduction as no.49 (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford);1 see also no.50 (Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts; 1907.16).

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

1
Luke Herrmann, Ruskin and Turner: A Study of Ruskin as a Collector of Turner, Based on his Gifts to the University of Oxford; Incorporating a Catalogue Raisonné of the Turner Drawings in the Ashmolean Museum, London 1968, p.90 no.67, pl.XLII f; see also Finberg 1909, I, p.123.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Bonshaw Tower from the North 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-bonshaw-tower-from-the-north-r1179455, accessed 30 June 2024.