By Kind Permission of a Private Collection
By Kind Permission of a Private Collection
Drawn and etched by Turner. Engraved in mezzotint by Lupton. Dated 1819 and published in Part 14 of the Liber Studiorum ( Finberg 69). Category: Mountainous. See Forrester, p.131.
A portion of the foreground of this plate is reproduced in Modern Painters IV as an example of good stone drawing ( Works, 6.373). In his Notes on the Turner Gallery (1856) Ruskin includes it in a list of the 'best of the series' ( Works, 13.96). In The Elements of Drawing (1857), he recommends study of it as one of the 'most desirable' Liber Studiorum subjects, drawing attention to the fine etching ( Works, 15.98-99), and points out that the clouds 'are among the best of Turner's storm studies' ( Works, 15.131). An impression was included in the Oxford Rudimentary Series and catalogued in 1878 as 'The most notable of the Scottish subjects in the Liber, admirably engraved by Mr. Lupton over Turner's yet more admirable etching' ( Works, 21.219).
This is one of five Scottish Liber Studiorum subjects which Ruskin mentions, in the last chapter of Praeterita, as being 'more complete expressions of his [Turner's] intellect, and more noble monuments of his art, than all his mightiest after work' ( Works, 35.549).
J.M.W. Turner 1775-1851
Ben Arthur, Scotland c.1819
Etching and mezzotint, printed in brown inks on wove paper, 18.4x26.7cm
Engraving:
Engraved by T. Lupton, c.1819
Mezzotint engraving, 18x26.5cm
Engraved for the Liber Studiorum, part 14
Provenance: …; A.A. Allen, who presented it through the National Art Collections Fund, 1925
Further Comments: No preliminary drawing is known of this subject. The details of the original drawing have been replaced with those for the first published state of the work.
Collection: Tate Gallery, London