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

David Wallace-Hadrill and Janet Carolan have suggested that the inscriptions on this page may refer to the Blackwater River and Loanroidge Farm, and that the sketch may therefore have been made at the meeting of the Rivers Blackwater and Averon near Loanroidge Farm, six miles north of Evanton in Ross-Shire.1 One of the Rivers is in the foreground, and on the summit of the hill to the left is a shape that the authors suggest may be the Fyrish Monument on Cnoc Fyrish to the south (see Tate D34836; Turner Bequest CCCXLIV d 353 for references to further sketches of the monument).

The Fyrish Monument was built by Hector Munro, the uncle of Hugh Munro of Novar House near Evanton, where Turner stayed for several days during his 1831 tour of Scotland. The present sketch, if the identification is correct, was made during a day trip around the country to the north-west of Evanton. On this trip Turner (probably accompanied by Munro) visited the Black Rock Gorge and Glen Glass, to the south of the current view. The present sheet is of the same laid writing paper as a number of leafs bearing sketches of those sites (for references see Tate D34791; Turner Bequest CCCXLIV d 324).