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

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

Joseph Mallord William Turner Dunstaffnage Castle and Chapel from the West and South 1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Dunstaffnage Castle and Chapel from the West and South’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 91 Recto:
Dunstaffnage Castle and Chapel from the West and South 1831
D26920
Turner Bequest CCLXXIII 91
Pencil on white wove paper, 116 x 186 mm
Inscribed in blue ink by John Ruskin ‘91’ top left running vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLXXIII 91’ top right running vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The two sketches on this page are of Dunstaffnage Castle and Chapel, which stand about 150 metres away from each other on a headland at the mouth of Loch Etive. The larger sketch across the centre of the page shows the two structures from the west, with the ruined chapel at the right and the castle beyond it to the left. They appear closer together in the sketch than they are in reality. Turner seems to have struggled to find a view that included both the castle and chapel, and therefore had to alter their spatial relationship in the composition of his watercolour of Dunstaffnage circa 1832–5 (Indianapolis Museum of Art),1 which he painted to illustrate Tales of a Grandfather, volume 24 of Sir Walter Scott’s Prose Works. There is a similar but more detailed sketch on folio 91 verso (D26921), and another view of the castle and chapel on folio 90 (D26918).
The second sketch, drawn at the fore-edge of the page with the sketchbook inverted, shows the castle and the ruin of an outbuilding from the south. Behind the castle and across Loch Linnhe are the mountains on the island of Mull at the left and the Morvern hills to the right. Turner may have made the drawing from across Dunstaffnage Bay, as a similar view on folio 91 verso was evidently made from across the water.
For references to all of Turner’s sketches of Dunstaffnage see folio 89 (D26916).

Thomas Ardill
January 2010

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.344 no.1124.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Dunstaffnage Castle and Chapel from the West and South 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 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-dunstaffnage-castle-and-chapel-from-the-west-and-south-r1135277, accessed 16 January 2025.