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 A West Country Mill, Farm or Industrial Building 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A West Country Mill, Farm or Industrial Building’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 56 Recto:
A West Country Mill, Farm or Industrial Building 1811
D41337
Turner Bequest CXXV a 56
Pencil on white wove paper, 141 x 215 mm
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ‘56’ top right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXXV.A – 56’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The subject has not been identified, although it was presumably recorded in Cornwall or North Devon along with most of the identified subjects in this sketchbook. It may be an overshot mill, with an elevated conduit bringing water from the right, or some other farm or industrial building (see under folio 52 recto; D41332), with a rather ramshackle appearance. There is possibly a church tower in the distance, beyond the trees to the left. It is unclear whether the skyline comprises hills or coastal cliffs.
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 ‘Cottage (or Mill) on Cliff’ in a manuscript listing,1 while C.F. Bell described it in his own notes as ‘Mine buildings’.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) 30.
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 56.
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 ‘128 | 30’ bottom right. There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet.

Matthew Imms
July 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A West Country Mill, Farm or Industrial Building 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-a-west-country-mill-farm-or-industrial-building-r1137485, accessed 26 April 2024.