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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > West Country 1811 > Devonshire Coast, No.1 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?The Folly Tower above Penlee Point beside Plymouth Sound 1811

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?The Folly Tower above Penlee Point beside Plymouth Sound’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 88 Verso:
?The Folly Tower above Penlee Point beside Plymouth Sound 1811
D08530
Turner Bequest CXXIII 85a
Pencil on white wove printing paper, 75 x 117 mm
Inscribed by Turner in ink ‘[?Egecumb]’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
There is a slight sketch of what may be the same view among drawings made around Plymouth in the contemporary Ivy Bridge to Penzance sketchbook (Tate D08876; Turner Bequest CXXV 10a). The Gothic tower on its steep hill may be the folly tower which once overlooked Plymouth Sound above Penlee Point south of Mount Edgcumbe, apparently demolished during the First World War for security reasons,1 and still marked as a ruin on Ordnance Survey maps. It appears to be shown on the distant skyline of a view in the later Devon Rivers, No.2 sketchbook (Tate D09669; Turner Bequest CXXXIII 2).
For other Plymouth views in this sketchbook and elsewhere, see under folio 3 verso (D08367).

Matthew Imms
June 2011

1
‘Kingsand and Cawsand’, Rame Peninsula History, accessed 1 February 2011, http://www.ramehistorygroup.org.uk/files/rev_white_papers__ch14__kingsand_and_cawsand.pdf.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘?The Folly Tower above Penlee Point beside Plymouth Sound 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-the-folly-tower-above-penlee-point-beside-plymouth-sound-r1137007, accessed 26 April 2024.