‘Turners should be borrowed from Tate’
A call has been made for drawings by the great British artist William Turner to be shown in Perth.
During his 1801 tour of Scotland the famous painter and print maker captured Highland Perthshire in several drawings and on-site watercolours.
He drew rugged slopes, dark forests and rocky outcrops which he took back to his studio with a bundle of other Scottish landscape scenes to work up to more finished paintings.
Now Councillor Mike Williamson has made a suggestion that Perth and Kinross Council request the William Turner drawings of Killiecrankie and Blair Atholl are brought on loan from London’s V&A and Tate Britain to Perth Museum and Art Gallery to be shown in public.
The idea to display the Turner drawings in Perth has been passed on to Fiona Robertson, head of culture at Perth and Kinross Council, but as yet there are no news on whether it will result in a loan.
The idea came when a couple attending Tenandry Church for the dedication of a new war memorial made Cllr Williamson aware that the sketches existed.
He said: “To be honest, until that moment, I had no idea that Turner had done drawings in Perthshire.
“It was a nice discovery and even better when David and Liz Dunne told me the ones confirmed to be done here from his visit of 1801 depicted Ben Vrackie, Blair Atholl and Killiecrankie.
“I was excited to go home and look them up online.
“It was just like the Glenlyon Broach, a chance conversation a few year ago alerted me to the fact that there was this incredible Celtic artefact at the British Museum, a unique golden object with enormous relevance for Perthshire.
“When I enthused Culture Perth and Kinross to press for that to be lent to Perth Museum and Art Gallery, we had the basis of a tremendous exhibition with the broach as its centrepiece.
“Now the wheels are in motion for Perth to discuss if the Turner drawings could come for a trip to Scotland. I have done a bit of research and it seems there are about eight drawings from the Perthshire stage of his Scottish tour and they are not on display, they are off-display at the V&A and also in Tate Britain’s enormous storage area.
“Would it not be great to get them out of the basement and see them here? The landscape is the same as when he visited and he has captured the hills of Blair Atholl in his own style.”
Cllr Williamson was referring to ‘Blair Atholl, Looking towards Killiecrankie, circa 1801–2 by Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851’.
The watercolour image was previously thought to show Mount Snowdon as it has many technical similarities with a group of large sketches Turner painted out of doors on his tour of Wales in 1799.
However, experts now believe the picture is based on a pencil sketch from a sketchbook used on his 1801 tour of Scotland and have identified the subject as Blair Atholl, not the Welsh mountain country so often favoured by Turner.