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

Although Diana Cook and Dorothy Kirk follow Finberg’s wording in their caption, their text identifies the view as towards Morwellham, then a port serving the local mines, looking east along the Tamar from below Calstock Church (rather than showing Calstock itself); they reproduce an 1896 photograph of the scene, before it was obscured by trees in the foreground.1 The hills above Morwellham are visible from Windy Hill, on the road below the later railway bridge north-west of Calstock’s parish church, but Turner’s viewpoint must have been higher to be looking down on the river and village.

The slight forms of the right-hand quarter or so of the panoramic double-page drawing looking north and north-east up the Tamar towards Gunnislake, across folio 139 verso and the recto of the present leaf (D09653, D09654), may represent the bare outlines of the present view, suggesting that Turner used the same or adjacent vantage points for both sketches, simply turning further to his right to take in Morwellham here.

For other views along the Tamar Valley, see under folio 114 verso (D09606).