Joseph Mallord William Turner

The view is westwards towards the Longships rocks, with the Armed Knight formation just off the coast in the left foreground. The cluster of buildings now at Greeb Farm may include the one shown in the foreground here. For other views at and around Land’s End, see under folio 22 recto (D08941; CXXV 50, bound as CXXV a 22).

Eric Shanes has suggested that Turner consulted this and others among the drawings from folio 23 recto to folio 29 recto (D08942, D41301–D41305) in the process of making three loose, dramatically lit ‘colour beginnings’ of Land’s End (Tate D25129, D25172, D36324; Turner Bequest CCLXIII 7, 50, CCCLXV b 33) in about 1834, working towards his watercolour Longships Lighthouse, Land’s End (J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles),1 engraved in 1836 for the series Picturesque Views in England and Wales.2 The sketch on folio 27 recto (D41303) is the closest to the finished watercolour.

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 mistakenly noted the subject as ‘Cliffs with St. Mich^s Mt. in dist.’ in a manuscript listing,3 while C.F. Bell described it correctly in his own notes as ‘Lands End and Longships Lighthouse’.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 ‘Longships Lighthouse’ bottom left; inscribed by Edwin Fagg in pencil ‘108 | 9’ bottom right. There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet.