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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Wales 1798 > Cyfarthfa Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Distant View of Cyfarthfa Ironworks and the Valley of the Taf, Looking South-East 1798

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Distant View of Cyfarthfa Ironworks and the Valley of the Taf, Looking South-East’ 1798
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Distant View of Cyfarthfa Ironworks and the Valley of the Taf, Looking South-East 1798
D01632
Turner Bequest XLI 4
Pencil on white wove paper, 289 x 455 mm
Watermark ‘1794 | J Whatman’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Pendaren. Plymouth c – Carfara Works from Coady cumar [i.e. Cefn-coed-y-cymmer] | looking down the Vale’ bottom right, and ‘Pendaren’, ‘Pln’, ‘Stones’, and ‘C’ in the drawing
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘XLI – 4’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Cefn-coed-y-cymmer is a village on the north-western outskirts of Merthyr, at the crossing of the Brecon road with that between Neath and Ebbw Vale. Pen-y darran, another works, was founded in 1782 and remained in production until 1859; it lay a mile north-east of Merthyr. The Plymouth works were a mile south of Merthyr, which itself features in the centre distance of this drawing, dominated by its square church tower. The wooden aqueduct feeding the large water-wheel at Cyfarthfa is visible at the right; see D01629 and D01630 (Turner Bequest XLI 1, 2) in this sketchbook.
Verso:
Blank; inscribed in a later hand in pencil ‘No 5’; stamped in brown ink with Turner Bequest monogram.
‘No 5’ was the first furnace Anthony Bacon senior had built at the Plymouth works; he laid the foundation stone himself in 1765. However, it is unlikely that the inscription refers to this; compare the inscription on the verso of D01639 (Turner Bequest XLI 10a) in this sketchbook.

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Distant View of Cyfarthfa Ironworks and the Valley of the Taf, Looking South-East 1798 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-distant-view-of-cyfarthfa-ironworks-and-the-valley-of-the-r1173252, accessed 26 April 2024.