Joseph Mallord William Turner

The view may be eastwards along the North Devon coast, looking towards the village of Buck’s Mills on the right, with the coast of Barnstaple or Bideford Bay running round to the north-east beyond. There is a view towards Clovelly from Buck’s Mills in the contemporary Devonshire Coast, No.1 sketchbook (Tate D08766; Turner Bequest CXXIII 223).

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 and Turner’s inscription as ‘Coast near Clovelly. “Brook”’ in a manuscript listing,1 while C.F. Bell described it in his own notes as ‘Precipitous sea-coast [with] “Brook” in foreground’.2 Figures usually corresponding to Finberg’s MS catalogue page numbers, which differ from Bell’s sequence, are inscribed on the verso of most sheets.

Technical notes:

The sheet is slightly wrinkled, possibly as a result of exposure to damp.

Verso:

Blank, save for inscription by Edwin Fagg in pencil ‘180 | 80’ bottom right. There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet, and some dark rubbing or offsetting which matches that on the recto of folio 88 (D41370), showing that the two sheets were once in contact.