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

D03380–D03421, D03423–D03439, D04894, D40261, D41441, D41442

Turner Bequest LVIII 1–42, 44–60, LXXX A

Turner reported to the artist Joseph Farington (1747–1821) that he washed all these sheets of paper with a concoction of ‘India Ink and Tobacco water’ and used ‘liquid white of his own preparing’ for the highlights;1 the backs are also washed with this buff mixture, though they are only occasionally drawn on. A large number of these ‘Scottish Pencil’ subjects, as John Ruskin dubbed them,2 were noted in either the 1801 Scotch Lakes or Tummel Bridge sketchbooks (Tate; Turner Bequest LVI, LVII), and it is remarkable that they are often based on the slightest of outlines. But it is clear from other drawings in the series which do not rely on notes in sketchbooks that he was working in these media while actually on tour in Scotland (see for example D03412 and D03413; Turner Bequest LVIII 33, 34); rain spots on D03427 (Turner Bequest LVIII 48) testify to his having worked in this manner out of doors. It is likely that he went out on excursions from the inns where he stayed, making groups of drawings in different locations nearby.

The subjects may be considered, as far as they can be identified, in a sequence following Turner’s route through the Highlands, which may not correspond with the order in which he executed them; see the concordance in the technical notes below. Some suggestions as to locations have been offered on the evidence of apparent afforestation, indicating the radical improvements made by the 4th Duke of Atholl who in the later eighteenth century planted hundreds of thousands of larches and other softwoods, transforming the appearance of the formerly bleak landscapes of the Tummel, the Tilt, the Garry and the Tay. See D03412 and D03413 (Turner Bequest LVIII 33, 34).

Turner was clearly pleased with the results, and showed the drawings to his colleagues at the Royal Academy, for according to Farington they were ‘much approved’; Farington had enthused about the landscapes of Edinburgh after his visit there in 1788, and Turner reciprocated with his opinion that Scotland was ‘a more picturesque contry [sic] to study in than Wales’.3

Many commentators have been puzzled by this series of drawings, executed in monochrome, usually pencil and white gouache with occasional use of charcoal, on paper washed a darkish grey–buff: they seem to contradict Turner’s awakening sense of the power of light and colour, apparent in other work of the years round the turn of the century. Ruskin, who thought them dull, also described them as ‘scientific in the extreme’.4 In fact, the mountain scenery may well have prompted Turner to experiment with a slatey, rain–pervaded palette rather as his tour of the Rhine in 1817 was to do: that resulted in a set of fifty drawings, all executed in watercolour and gouache on grey–washed paper.5 The present author has suggested that, while recording his experiences in Scotland as precisely as possible, he was also deliberately paying tribute to the monochrome views in Italy that Richard Wilson (1713–1782) had made in black and white chalk on grey paper for the Earl of Dartmouth in the 1750s.6 Compare Turner’s use of coloured grounds in his Wilson sketchbook of 1796–7 (Tate; Turner Bequest XXXVII).

Whether or not they were begun on the spot or completed some time later, for consistency the sheets are all dated here to 1801 without further qualification.

The sheets were recorded by Finberg as originally:

Finberg noted that John Ruskin made up a parcel of 37 of the sheets, labelling it ‘AB. 290. P.R.’, and endorsing the contents: ‘37 Scottish Pencils. Of very great value. Too large for mounting or exhibiting till there is more room.’11

When the Turner Bequest works were transferred to the British Museum following the 1928 Tate Gallery flood, some of the drawings were mounted in a specially made hardback album (now emptied and preserved at Tate Britain), with a pencil note inside its cover by curator Arthur Magyer Hind:

Of the ‘Scottish Pencils’ catalogued as such by Finberg,12 Tate D03422 (Turner Bequest LVIII 43) has since been recognized as a Welsh subject of 1798. Conversely, Tate D04894 (Turner Bequest LXXX A), once considered an Alpine view, has been included here. As discussed above, a notional concordance follows, grouping the subjects in the order in which Turner would have encountered the identified locations on the 1801 tour.