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 the Torrs 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Ilfracombe from the Torrs’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 88 Verso:
Ilfracombe from the Torrs 1811
D41371
Turner Bequest CXXV a 88a
Pencil on white wove paper, 140 x 215 mm
Inscribed in pencil ‘184 | 83 bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s viewpoint is the Torrs area, west of Ilfracombe, looking east towards the town. In the centre is the mast on the summit of Capstone Hill overlooking the sea, with St Nicholas’s Chapel on the smaller Lantern Hill (marked by diagonal hatching) above the harbour beyond, with Hillsborough rising beyond and Rillage Point in the distance. The foreground is now largely built over. There is a view from further west on folio 61 recto (D41342). See under folio 37 recto (D41314) for other Ilfracombe views.
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 incorrectly as ‘Coast near Clovelly’ in a manuscript listing,1 while C.F. Bell described it in his own notes as ‘Precipitous coast’.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. As there are drawings on both sides of the present leaf (see also D41370), and this is the only such leaf otherwise unmatched, the uncertainty lies only in the minor issue of which drawing Finberg regarded as the recto and which the verso, as he gave the same title to each.
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) 81 Reverse or 81.
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 88a.
Technical notes:
There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet, which is slightly wrinkled, possibly as a result of exposure to damp.

Matthew Imms
July 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Ilfracombe from the Torrs 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-the-torrs-r1137519, accessed 27 April 2024.