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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > History Painting c.1799-1807 > Calais Pier Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Study for a View of Edinburgh c.1801-4

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Study for a View of Edinburgh’ c.1801-4
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 84 Verso:
Study for a View of Edinburgh c.1801–4
D05068
Turner Bequest LXXXI 166
Black and white chalks on blue laid paper, 271 x 436 mm
Inscribed by Turner in ink ‘Study for Edinburgh’ top centre
Stamped in black ‘LXXXI–166’ bottom right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
There is a similar horizontal study on folio 83 verso (D05066; Turner Bequest LXXXI 164). A large watercolour of Edinburgh New Town, Castle &c., from the Water of Leith appeared at the Royal Academy in 1802; it survives in a fragment (Museums Sheffield).1 A second large view, of Edinburgh from Caulton–hill, was shown in 1804 (Tate D03639; Turner Bequest LX H),2 while a further view, from Duddingston Loch, was planned but apparently not executed.
The composition on this page does not seem to correspond to any of these, but may be the view from St Anthony’s Chapel, on the slopes of Arthur’s Seat. In about 1833, Turner was to execute an untraced small–scale watercolour version of that subject3 to be engraved in 1836 as the frontispiece of Tales of a Grandfather for Walter Scott’s Prose Works (Tate impressions: T04750, T04985).

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.339 no.347 as untraced, p.489 no.347a, reproduced.
2
Ibid., p.339 no.348, pl.56.
3
Ibid., pp.432–3 no.1120, reproduced, as at Indianapolis Museum of Art (subsequently stolen).

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Study for a View of Edinburgh c.1801–4 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-study-for-a-view-of-edinburgh-r1178272, accessed 11 February 2025.