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 > Stonehenge Sketchbook [pseudo-Finberg ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Cheddar Gorge: High Rock from near Horseshoe Bend 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Cheddar Gorge: High Rock from near Horseshoe Bend’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 7 Recto:
Cheddar Gorge: High Rock from near Horseshoe Bend 1811
D41380
Turner Bequest CXXV b 7
Pencil on white wove paper, 222 x 183 mm
Watermark ‘H | 1808’
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ‘7’ top left, ascending vertically
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXXV.B – 7’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Looking west, High Rock is seen on the left, from the bend south-west of the Horseshoe Bend on the road leading through Cheddar Gorge. There are what seem to be similar views on folios 2 recto, 4 recto and 6 recto (D41375, D41377, D41379). Folios 1 recto–8 recto (D41374–D41381) are all views of Cheddar Gorge, most apparently made in a concentrated area around the Horseshoe Bend.
As discussed in the introduction, the pages of this ‘sketchbook’, which appear to have originally been loose sheets, are not recorded in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory of the Bequest, although he subsequently noted the subject as ‘Rocks’ in a manuscript list,1 while C.F. Bell described it in his own notes as ‘Rocky gorge’.2 Figures corresponding to Finberg’s MS catalogue page numbers, which differ from Bell’s sequence, are inscribed on the verso of each sheet.
Although this page and folio 8 recto (D41381) are listed in the ‘Catalogue’ checklist of James Hamilton’s exhibition catalogue Turner and the Scientists, where they are described as ‘Devon’ views and as no.106 and fig.121,3 it appears from Tate registrars’ records that folio 6 recto (D41379) – the work actually reproduced – was exhibited. It would not in any case have been feasible to exhibit two successive rectos at once.
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(b) 14.
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 CXXVB 7.
3
James Hamilton, Turner and the Scientists, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1998, p.141.
Technical notes:
The sheet is wrinkled, possibly as a result of exposure to damp. There are glue stains at the corners, showing through from the verso, and some slight spotting.
Verso:
Blank, save for inscription by Edwin Fagg in pencil ‘217 | 14’ top right, ascending vertically; there is a notch cut out of the stub to which the leaf is attached, so as not to obscure these numbers. There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet.

Matthew Imms
May 2010

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Cheddar Gorge: High Rock from near Horseshoe Bend 1811 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2010, 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-cheddar-gorge-high-rock-from-near-horseshoe-bend-r1137529, accessed 20 April 2024.