Joseph Mallord William Turner

Turner’s viewpoint is Capstone Hill, looking east towards Ilfracombe Harbour, where the masts of shipping are seen, with St Nicholas’s Chapel on Lantern Hill, and Hillsborough rising beyond. Eric Shanes has noted this sketch among others1 in relation to the watercolour Ilfracombe, North Devon of about 1813–16 (private collection),2 engraved in 1818 for the Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England (see the concordance of the series in the 1811 tour introduction). See under folio 37 recto (D41314) for further discussion and other Ilfracombe views.

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 as ‘Rocks on coast’ in a manuscript listing,3 while C.F. Bell described it tentatively in his own notes as ‘Ilfracombe(?)’.4 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 inscriptions: inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ‘Ilfracomb’ bottom left; inscribed by Edwin Fagg in pencil ‘188 | 88’ top left, upside down; there is a notch in the stub to which the leaf is attached, to avoid obscuring the number. There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet.