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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Scotland 1818-20 > Edinburgh, 1818, Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Sketches of Blackness Castle and Linlithgow Loch 1818

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Sketches of Blackness Castle and Linlithgow Loch’ 1818
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 35 Recto:
Sketches of Blackness Castle and Linlithgow Loch 1818
D13517
Turner Bequest CLXVI 35
Pencil on white wove paper, 90 x 112 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Linlithgow Lock’ upper centre left inverted, ‘Forth’ upper centre
Stamped in black ‘CLXVI 35’ bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sketchbook inverted, the drawing at the bottom half of the page shows Blackness Castle on a promontory from the east with the Firth of Forth in the foreground and to the right. While the sketch is rather economical it provides all of the important architectural information. Although it appears to extend to folio 34 verso (D13516), this is in fact part of a separate drawing on that page.
The top half of the page contains two drawings. One, continued from folio 34 verso in the same orientation as the Blackness sketch, showing the north shore of the Firth of ‘Forth’. Beneath this, with the sketchbook turned around, is a sketch inscribed ‘Linlithgow Lock’, including a clump of trees in the right foreground, and hills in the distance.
Folios 35 verso–36 (D13518–D13519) similarly contain a series of sketches of Linlithgow Loch and Blackness Castle.

Thomas Ardill
December 2007

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Sketches of Blackness Castle and Linlithgow Loch 1818 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2007, 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-sketches-of-blackness-castle-and-linlithgow-loch-r1132062, accessed 14 January 2025.