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 > Cornwall and Devon Sketchbook [pseudo ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Penzance and Mount's Bay from Quarry Hill 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Penzance and Mount's Bay from Quarry Hill’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 16 Recto:
Penzance and Mount’s Bay from Quarry Hill 1811
D41291
Turner Bequest CXXV a 16
Pencil on white wove paper, 142 x 215 mm
Faint embossed stamp ‘BATH | [crown] | VELLUM’ within oval cartouche
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Penzance’ bottom left
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ’16.’ top right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXXV.A – 16’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s viewpoint is at or near the junction of the Penzance–St Ives road and the lane down to Gulval on Quarry Hill. The road is at the bottom left, with what appears to be a figure on a cart. South-west past Chyandour is the harbour at Penzance and the spire of St Mary’s Chapel to its right (later replaced by the tower of St Mary’s Church), with Newlyn beyond and the coast south to Penlee Point and St Clement’s Isle off Mousehole. There is a similar sketch from a little nearer to Penzance on folio 84 recto (D41366), and a distant view of St Michael’s Mount from further north on the same road on folio 10 recto (D41285). For other views of Penzance, see under folios 6 recto (D41281).
As discussed in the introduction, the pages of this ‘sketchbook’ appear to have originally been loose sheets, and are not recorded in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory of the Bequest, although he subsequently noted the Turner’s inscription identifying the subject as ‘“Penzance”’ in a manuscript listing,1 as did C.F. Bell in his own notes.2 Figures usually corresponding to Finberg’s MS catalogue page numbers, which differ from Bell’s sequence, are inscribed on the verso of most sheets.
1
A.J. Finberg, MS addenda, [circa 1928–39], tipped into a copy of his A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.I, opposite p.356, as CXXV(a) 33.
2
C.F. Bell, MS addenda, [after 1928], tipped into a copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.I, p.356A, as CXXVa 16.
Technical notes:
The sheet is slightly wrinkled, possibly as a result of exposure to damp.
Verso:
Blank, save for inscriptions: inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ‘Penzance’ bottom left; inscribed by Edwin Fagg in pencil ‘132 | 33’ bottom right. There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet.

Matthew Imms
July 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Penzance and Mount’s Bay from Quarry Hill 1811 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 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-penzance-and-mounts-bay-from-quarry-hill-r1137439, accessed 25 April 2024.