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 Rocky Bay in Cornwall or North Devon 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Rocky Bay in Cornwall or North Devon’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 80 Recto:
A Rocky Bay in Cornwall or North Devon 1811
D41362
Turner Bequest CXXV a 80
Pencil on white wove paper, 139 x 215 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Sand’ near centre
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ‘80’ top right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXXV.A – 80’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The half-sketched building on the right lends scale to this small cove or bay, currently unidentified but consistent with the rugged geology of various Cornish and North Devon sites Turner recorded elsewhere in this sketchbook.
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 ‘Rocks on coast’ in a manuscript listing,1 while C.F. Bell described it similarly in his own notes as ‘Rock-bound bay’.2 Figures differing from Bell’s sequence are inscribed on the verso of most sheets; they usually correspond with the pagination given in Finberg’s MS catalogue, but here and in a few other cases the numbers do not match, so a tentative connection has been made on the basis of Finberg’s descriptive title.
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) 72.
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 80.
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 ‘103’ bottom right. There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet.

Matthew Imms
July 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Rocky Bay in Cornwall or North Devon 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-rocky-bay-in-cornwall-or-north-devon-r1137510, accessed 24 April 2024.