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

The present work is one of eight ‘colour beginnings’ catalogued here as Land’s End subjects; the others are Tate D25129, D25163, D25165, D25172, D36323, D36324 and D36326 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 7, 41, 43, 50, CCCLXV 32, 33, 35). A further colour study has been proposed as a Land’s End view among other possibilities (Tate D25185; Turner Bequest CCLXIII 63). For Turner’s 1811 pencil sketches at Land’s End, see under D25129.

Eric Shanes has suggested that this study, D25163, D25165 and D36326 (CCLXIII 41, 43, CCCLXV 35) relate in varying degrees to the watercolour Longships Lighthouse, Land’s End of about 1834 (J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles),1 engraved in 1836 for the Picturesque Views in England and Wales (no impressions held at Tate).2 The most closely related pencil study in the 1811 Cornwall and Devon sketchbook (albeit with many variations) is Tate D41303 (Turner Bequest CXXV a 27). With its bright cliff-like form at the right and a darker headland beyond under a stormy sky, the present work may be a variation on the forms set out in D25165 (CCLXIII 43), the closest of the four colour studies to the finished England and Wales design.

See also the introductions to the present subsection of identified subjects and the overall England and Wales ‘colour beginnings’ grouping to which this work has been assigned.

Verso:
Blank (laid down and not examined).