Joseph Mallord William Turner

Falmouth Harbour

1811

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Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Devonshire Coast, No.1 Sketchbook
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 75 x 117 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D08579
Turner Bequest CXXIII 111

Catalogue entry

Eric Shanes has noted this sketch, along with that on folio 112 verso (D08576; CXXIII 109a), as a source for the watercolour Falmouth Harbour of about 1812–14 (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight),1 engraved in 1816 for the Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England 2 (see the concordance of the series in the 1811 tour introduction). The drawing is in at least four and perhaps five truncated sections, with the tower of the Church of King Charles the Martyr at the centre, drawn from the same viewpoint, perhaps from below the Beacon, at about where Harbour Terrace and Erisey Terrace now meet above the High Street.

There is a similar view on folio 92 verso (D08538; CXXIII 89a) which presumably also informed the Southern Coast design. For other views in and around Falmouth see under folio 7 verso (D08375).

Matthew Imms
June 2011

Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, pp.351–2 no.455, reproduced.

Shanes 1981, p.152.

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