Joseph Mallord William Turner Sketches of Shipping in Leith Roads and the Firth of Forth with Barnbougle Castle 1822
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 35 Recto:
Sketches of Shipping in Leith Roads and the Firth of Forth with Barnbougle Castle 1822
D17562
Turner Bequest CC 35
Turner Bequest CC 35
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 187 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Barnbougle’ top left
Very faint sign of John Ruskin’s red ink inscription, ?‘35’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CC 35’ bottom right
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Barnbougle’ top left
Very faint sign of John Ruskin’s red ink inscription, ?‘35’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CC 35’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.611, CC 35, as ‘On the Clyde.’.
1981
Gerald Finley, Turner and George the Fourth in Edinburgh 1822, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1981, pp.83, [131] reproduced as ‘Crane for installing the foundation stone of the National Monument. Turner represents the moment after the foundation stone was set in place. The crane is shown moving the great covering stone over the foundation stone, whose three rectangular cavities can be seen (they contain sealed bottles of coins, newspapers and inscription plates); also Leith Roads, with shipping, “Barnbougle” Castle’.
1997
William S. Rodner, J.M.W. Turner: Romantic Painter of the Industrial Revolution, Berkeley and London 1997, pp.23, 171 note 15.
The sketch across the centre of this page has interested commentators since it was noticed to contain one of the first known depictions by Turner of a steamboat. Although Finberg does not mention the vessel, his incorrect identification of the view as being ‘On the Clyde’,1 suggests that he noticed the funnels and smoke at the left of the sketch and assumed that Turner must have been depicting the river that was serviced by some of the first steamboat services and that became the centre of British boatbuilding. Gerald Finley recognised the river as the Forth, and William Rodner spotted the steamboat and noted that it was ‘one of Turner’s earliest representations of a steamer’, suggesting that it could be the ‘James Watt’,2 although it could equally be the Comet, another steamer accompanying the royal squadron of George IV in 1822. He seems not to have noticed the very similar vessel on folio 73 verso (D17636).
Many of the other vessels in this sketch are likely to belong to the royal squadron, and the background is likely to be Leith Roads as Finley and David Wallace-Hadrill have suggested,3 although there are no distinguishing features, unless, as Wallace-Hadrill suggests, Calton Hill can be seen. The sketch continues very slightly on folio 34 verso (D17561).
At the top of the page is a sketch of the coastline around ‘Barnbougle’ Castle on the Firth of Forth between Leith and South Queensferry which may have been sketched while Turner was in a boat sketching the shipping in Leith Roads. There is another reference to Barnbougle on folio 53 (D17597). The drawing beneath may be a continuation of the coastline to the west. The drawing continues at the top of folio 34 verso.
Thomas Ardill
September 2008
How to cite
Thomas Ardill, ‘Sketches of Shipping in Leith Roads and the Firth of Forth with Barnbougle Castle 1822 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2008, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www