Two years after a fleeting visit in November 1818, J.M.W. Turner relied on a brief pencil sketch and his uncanny memory to encompass in this single view all that was of interest to the historian, antiquarian, and seeker of the picturesque in the village of Roslin, south of Edinburgh. On the high ground to the left is the legendary Gothic chapel, wreathed in Masonic lore and the mysteries of the Knights Templar. Below the chapel are the ruins of Rosslyn Castle, built of the ruddy local stone, so that it looks like a natural outcrop of the crag to which it clings. At the foot of a precipitous path through cliff and copse lies Roslin glen, a place of surprising wildness carved by the rolling river Esk into the otherwise gentle Scottish lowlands.
Sir Walter Scott, who had once lived at the far end of the dell, memorably described castle, chapel, and glen in his writings. He brought Turner to Roslin with a commission for this watercolor to be engraved for Scott's Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque Scenery of Scotland. Scott knew of Turner's unchallenged powers to compress all vital description into a small watercolor, while expanding a scene with dimensions of sublime light, color, and atmosphere. Where the author's words would fail, Scott admitted, the painter could succeed in making intelligible the "inexpressible beauty" of Roslin.
Sweet are thy paths, O, passing sweet!
By Esk's fair streams that run,
O'er airy steep, through copsewood deep,
Impervious to the sun.
-Sir Walter Scott, from "The Gray Brother," 1801
