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 Ilfracombe from Hillsborough 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Ilfracombe from Hillsborough’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 42 Recto:
Ilfracombe from Hillsborough 1811
D41321
Turner Bequest CXXV a 42
Pencil on white wove paper, 140 x 215 mm
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ‘42’ top right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXXV.A – 42’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Ilfracombe is seen to the west across its harbour, obscured by the rocky heights of Hillsborough in the foreground. See under folio 37 recto (D41314) for other views of the town and locality.
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 ‘Town surrounded by cliffs’ in a manuscript listing,1 while C.F. Bell described it in his own notes as ‘Village with harbour in rocky cove’.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.357, as CXXV(a) 84.
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 42.
Technical notes:
The sheet is slightly wrinkled, possibly as a result of exposure to damp.
Verso:
Blank, save for inscription by Edwin Fagg in pencil ‘184 | 84’ bottom right. There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet.

Matthew Imms
July 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Ilfracombe from Hillsborough 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-ilfracombe-from-hillsborough-r1137469, accessed 23 April 2024.