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

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

Joseph Mallord William Turner Mountains at the Head of Loch Scavaig; and ?Port Glasgow 1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Mountains at the Head of Loch Scavaig; and ?Port Glasgow’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 73 Recto:
Mountains at the Head of Loch Scavaig; and ?Port Glasgow 1831
D26580
Turner Bequest CCLXX 73
Pencil on white wove paper, 125 x 201 mm
Inscribed in red ink by John Ruskin ‘73’ top right running vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLXX – 73’ top right running vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
From the hilltops above Elgol pier, the two larger sketches on this page look towards the Cuillin Mountains at the head of Loch Scavaig and towards the entrance of Loch Coruisk. Gars-bhein is at the left with Sgurr na-Stri at the right and Loch na Cuile and Loch nan Leachd in between. There are further studies of the loch on folios 37 verso, 38, 69, 70, 72 verso and 78 verso–79 (D26509, D26510, D26752, D26754, D26579, D26591–D26592).1
At the top of the page is a small sketch of a town on the coast with a towered building. The town is unlikely to be anywhere on Skye, so the drawing must have been made on a separate occasion. It bears some resemblance to the small sketch of Port Glasgow from Greenock on folio 17 (D26468).

Thomas Ardill
March 2010

1
Identified by David Wallace–Hadrill and Janet Carolan, ‘Turner on the Isle of Skye 1831’, [circa 1991], Tate catalogue files, [folios 16–17].

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Mountains at the Head of Loch Scavaig; and ?Port Glasgow 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 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-mountains-at-the-head-of-loch-scavaig-and-port-glasgow-r1135014, accessed 25 November 2024.