Joseph Mallord William Turner

Land’s End: Looking North to Pedn-mên-du and Cape Cornwall

1811

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Cornwall and Devon Sketchbook [pseudo-Finberg CXXV a]
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 141 × 215 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D41305
Turner Bequest CXXV a 29

Catalogue entry

The viewpoint is east of Dr Syntax’s Head and Land’s End, looking north along the cliffs above the Gamper to the Pedn-mên-du headland in the middle distance, with Cape Cornwall at the far left beyond Whitesand Bay. There is a similar view from a little to the west on folio 28 recto (D41304). For other views at and around Land’s End, see under folio 22 recto (D08941; CXXV 50, bound as CXXV a 22).

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: Mounts Bay’ in a manuscript listing,1 while C.F. Bell correctly described it in his own notes as ‘Near Lands End’.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.

A.J. Finberg, MS addenda, [circa 1928–39], tipped into a copy of his A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.I, opposite p.356, as CXXV(a) 12.

C.F. Bell, MS addenda, [after 1928], tipped into a copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.I, p.356^A, as CXXV^a 29.

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 ‘Land’s End?’ bottom left; inscribed by Edwin Fagg in pencil ‘110 | 12’ bottom right. There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet.

Matthew Imms
July 2011

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