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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Wales and Isle of Wight 1795-1800 > Isle of Wight Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Figure on Top of a Precipitous Cliff ?1795-1800

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Figure on Top of a Precipitous Cliff’ ?1795-1800 (Inside back cover of sketchbook)
Inside back cover of sketchbook
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Inside Back Cover:
A Figure on Top of a Precipitous Cliff ?1795–1800
D41253
Pencil on white wove paper, 264 x 204 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pen and brown ink with subjects and a name (see main catalogue entry)
Stamped in black ‘XXIV’ top right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The following is inscribed in ink at the top of the page. The last entry has been deleted with wash:
Church at Newport Isle of Wight.      Novr   2 1800 
Winchester Cross -    ..   Mr. Alexander – 
Northampton Do         – 
The last entry has been deleted with a stroke of wash.
The pencil sketch is very slight and stylised, almost a diagram, and may not be by Turner. It is somewhat reminiscent of certain drawings of Henry Fuseli (1741–1825); for example a study inscribed ‘Devils Dyke’ (Öffentliche Kunstsammlungen, Basel), where diminutive figures are seen on precipitous paths above a vertiginous cliff with the sea below. A more substantial drawing, The Ladies of Hastings (Kunsthaus, Zurich), contains larger figures, including a man looking up from below at promenading women. The former dates to around 1790, and the latter to 1798–1800.
The drawing here and Fuseli’s sketches are connected, however tenuously, by an experience of the coastal cliffs of southern England. The only portion of the Isle of Wight coast that might correspond to this extremely summary sketch is the height of what is now called Tennyson’s Down, above Freshwater Bay.

Andrew Wilton
April 2012

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘A Figure on Top of a Precipitous Cliff ?1795–1800 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2012, 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-figure-on-top-of-a-precipitous-cliff-r1141040, accessed 16 April 2024.