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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Dartmouth Castle and Kingswear down the Dart Estuary 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 87 Recto:
Dartmouth Castle and Kingswear down the Dart Estuary 1811
D08527
Turner Bequest CXXIII 84
Pencil on white wove writing paper, 75 x 117 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘84’ bottom right, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CXXIII – 84’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This slight sketch, looking south to Dartmouth Castle on the right and Kingswear Castle on the left from Bayard’s Cove or nearby, informed the distance and the left-hand part of the untraced watercolour Dartmouth, Devon,1 dated by Eric Shanes to about 1811,2 which was engraved in 1815 for the Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England (see the concordance of the series in the 1811 tour introduction). The central and right-hand sections of the design were based on the sketch on folio 106 recto (D08564; CXXIII 103).
For other Dartmouth views in this sketchbook and elsewhere, see under folio 3 recto (D08366).

Matthew Imms
June 2011

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.351 no.453, as circa 1814; reproduced in Eric Shanes, Turner’s Rivers, Harbours and Coasts, London 1981, p.[144] no.104.
2
Shanes 1981, p.152.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Dartmouth Castle and Kingswear down the Dart Estuary 1811 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2011, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-dartmouth-castle-and-kingswear-down-the-dart-estuary-r1137004, accessed 18 September 2024.