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

Continued from folio 104 verso opposite (D03114; Turner Bequest LVI 102a), this is the first of a series of drawings of a ruined tower that Turner encountered on the road north from Taymouth to Tummel. On folio 109 recto (D03123; Turner Bequest LVI 107) he annotates a drawing of a similar subject as ‘Castle Garth Glen Lyon’, and on folio 106 verso (D03118; Turner Bequest LVI 104a) there is a diagrammatic map of the Keltney Burn with the position of ‘Garth’ marked.

The present drawing is not annotated mores specifically than ‘Glen Lyon’, and it may show another tower, that of Comrie Castle on the bank of the River Lyon, which Turner would have seen on his way to Garth. At that point he was technically in Glen Lyon, but only briefly; by the time he reached Garth he was in the Strath of Appin, through which the Keltney Burn flows south to join the Lyon. There is another drawing of what may be this tower on folios 105 verso–106 recto (D03116–D03117; Turner Bequest LVI 103a–104).