J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Land's End with the Armed Knight 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 66 Recto:
Land’s End with the Armed Knight 1811
D41348
Turner Bequest CXXV a 66
Pencil on white wove paper, 140 x 215 mm
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ’66.’ top right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXXV.A – 66’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Armed Knight rocks are seen on the right from the cliffs at Dr Johnson’s Head, with the coast running south-east towards Gwennap Head beyond. The cross on the skyline towards the top left, perhaps a signals mast, appears from the opposite direction on folio 27 recto (D41303). For other views at and around Land’s End, see under folio 22 recto (D08941; CXXV 50, bound as CXXV a 22).
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 ‘Cliffs’ in a manuscript listing,1 while C.F. Bell described it in his own notes as ‘Cliffs and isolated rocks’.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) 10.
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 66.
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 ‘108 | 10’ bottom right. There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet.

Matthew Imms
July 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Land’s End with the Armed Knight 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-lands-end-with-the-armed-knight-r1137496, accessed 29 March 2024.