Joseph Mallord William Turner Falmouth and Pendennis Castle from St Mawes Castle 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 148 Verso:
Falmouth and Pendennis Castle from St Mawes Castle 1811
D08643
Turner Bequest CXXIII 145a
Turner Bequest CXXIII 145a
Pencil on white wove writing paper, 75 x 117 mm
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.350, CXXIII 145a, as ‘Forts at mouth river’.
1981
Eric Shanes, Turner’s Rivers, Harbours and Coasts, London 1981, p.38 under no.80, ill.11, p.152.
1988
Sam Smiles, ‘Picture Notes [on St Mawes views]’, Turner Studies, vol.8, no.1, Summer 1988, pp.54, 57 note 2.
1990
Eric Shanes, Turner’s England 1810–38, London 1990, p.142 under no.113, ill.17.
In identifying this subject, Eric Shanes has observed that the main upper view here is a continuation from the right of the main drawing below.1 There appears to be a third coastal outline at the top right. In the lower drawing, Turner looked south-west towards the sea beyond the Tudor St Mawes Castle2 in the foreground, with Pendennis Castle on its promontory across Carrick Roads in the distance. Pendennis Castle’s middle section is repeated at the respective edges of the two sections (to the right below and to the left above), while in the upper drawing Falmouth is shown in the centre, due west of St Mawes.
Turner followed the sketch(es) in his watercolour of Falmouth of about 1825 (Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts),3 engraved in 1828 for The Ports of England (but not published until 1856 in The Harbours of England). Instead of treating the two parts of the original panoramic view as a continuum, he used the left-hand two thirds of the upper section (seen from the east) for the distance of the watercolour and moved the St Mawes fort (drawn here from the north-east) in front of the distant hill, significantly distorting the true relationship between the fort and the background.4 As the central tower is on a circular plan this shift is less apparent than it might have been.
For other views in and around St Mawes and Falmouth see under folio 7 verso (D08375).
Matthew Imms
June 2011
See [Adèle Campbell (ed.)], Heritage Unlocked: Guide to Free [English Heritage] Sites in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, London 2004, p.89.
How to cite
Matthew Imms, ‘Falmouth and Pendennis Castle from St Mawes Castle 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