Joseph Mallord William Turner

Drake’s Island, Mount Edgcumbe and Penlee Point from Plymouth Hoe

1814

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment
Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Devon Rivers, No.2 Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 110 × 178 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D09669
Turner Bequest CXXXIII 2

Catalogue entry

Turner’s viewpoint is the western end of Plymouth Hoe, looking south-west past Drake’s Island to Mount Edgcumbe and Penlee Point. The prospect is continued to the right on the verso (D09670); compare also folio 18 recto (D09690).
There is a similar view in the 1811 Devonshire Coast, No.1 sketchbook (Tate D08555; Turner Bequest CXXIII 98). The tower in the distance may be the folly above Penlee Point, apparently demolished During World War I for security reasons,1 and still marked as a ruin on Ordnance Survey maps. It also appears to be shown on the distant skyline of a view in the Devonshire Coast, No.1 sketch, and in more detail in the 1811 Ivy Bridge to Penzance sketchbook (Tate D08876; Turner Bequest CXXV 10a).
Turner had made many drawings around Plymouth on his extended 1813 visit, using the Plymouth, Hamoaze sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest CXXXI). For various studies on the River Tamar and its estuary the Hamoaze in the present book, see under folio 3 recto (D09671).

Matthew Imms
July 2014

1
See ‘Kingsand and Cawsand’, Rame Peninsula History, accessed 1 February 2011, http://www.ramehistorygroup.org.uk/files/rev_white_papers__ch14__kingsand_and_cawsand.pdf.

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