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 The Coast of Bude Bay from Bude 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Coast of Bude Bay from Bude’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 35 Verso:
The Coast of Bude Bay from Bude 1811
D41312
Turner Bequest CXXV a 35a
Pencil on white wove paper, 142 x 215 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Light’ centre left, ‘[?Sunny]’ at centre, and ‘Rain | [?Half ...]’ and ‘sea dark’ towards centre right
Inscribed in pencil ‘172 | 72’ bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Compass Point appears above Bude’s beach on the left, with the Cornish coast to the south-west across Bude Bay beyond, rather laterally compressed and with observations on the light and weather conditions. The composition is effectively a detail of the wider view on the recto (D41311), under which further sketches are discussed.
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 subject as ‘Coast scene: – “Sea dark”, “Stoney”, “Light”’ in a manuscript listing,1 while C.F. Bell correctly described it in his own notes as ‘Bude. Notes continue in Turner’s writing’.2 Figures including one usually corresponding to Finberg’s MS catalogue page numbering, which differs from Bell’s sequence, are inscribed on the verso of most sheets, although in this case neither number matches Finberg’s.
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) 68 Reverse.
2
C.F. Bell, MS addenda, [after 1928], tipped into a copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.I, p.356B, as CXXVa 35a.
Technical notes:
There are glue stains at the corners of the recto of the sheet, where there is another drawing (D41311). The sheet is slightly wrinkled, possibly as a result of exposure to damp.

Matthew Imms
July 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Coast of Bude Bay from Bude 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-the-coast-of-bude-bay-from-bude-r1137460, accessed 25 April 2024.