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 Boscastle: Penally Hill with Willapark and the Meachard Beyond 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Boscastle: Penally Hill with Willapark and the Meachard Beyond’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 71 Recto:
Boscastle: Penally Hill with Willapark and the Meachard Beyond 1811
D41353
Turner Bequest CXXV a 71
Pencil on white wove paper, 140 x 215 mm
Embossed stamp ‘BATH | [crown] | VELLUM’ within oval cartouche
Inscribed by Turner ‘G’ towards top centre
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ’71.’ top right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXXV.A – 71’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Seen from the east, above Boscastle’s harbour on the River Valency, Penally Hill is in the foreground with Willapark Hill and its look-out tower beyond and the Meachard Rock in the sea to the right. There is another view from further up the north bank of the Valency on folio 55 verso (D41336) and, in the contemporary Devonshire Coast, No.1 sketchbook (Tate D08705; Turner Bequest CXXIII 182), a further sketch used for a Southern Coast design.
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 tentatively but correctly as ‘Rocks on coast, with watch tower. Prbly near Boscastle’ in a manuscript listing,1 while C.F. Bell described it in his own notes as ‘Rocky coast’.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) 65.
2
C.F. Bell, MS addenda, [after 1928], tipped into a copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.I, p.356C, as CXXVa 71.
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 ‘166 | 65’ top left, upside down, and a stray pencil mark towards the bottom left. There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet.

Matthew Imms
July 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Boscastle: Penally Hill with Willapark and the Meachard Beyond 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-boscastle-penally-hill-with-willapark-and-the-meachard-r1137501, accessed 26 April 2024.