Joseph Mallord William Turner

Eric Shanes has noted this sketch as a source for the watercolour Teignmouth, Devonshire which he dates to about 1811 (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven),1 engraved in 1815 for the Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England2 (see the concordance of the series in the 1811 tour introduction). Presumably on the same occasion, Turner also made a detailed drawing of the scene, showing more of the estuary and the bank to the right, across two pages of the Corfe to Dartmouth sketchbook (Tate D08851, D08852; Turner Bequest CXXIV 36–37), which he followed closely in the watercolour, and in the oil painting Teignmouth, which he exhibited at his gallery in 1812 (Tate T03882; displayed at Petworth House, West Sussex).3

Arthur Ebdon identifies the location as the Strand at Ringmore, upstream across the River Teign from Teignmouth, and notes that sixty-eight vessels were constructed in the Teignmouth area during the Napoleonic Wars.4 For other views of Teignmouth see under folio 71 verso (D08499; CXXIII 68a).

Apparently by an oversight or typographical error, this drawing is not listed by Finberg in his 1909 Turner Bequest Inventory. It has since been given the pseudo-Finberg number ‘239v’. He had listed the drawing on the recto (D08788; CXXIII 239), but also omits to mention the printed page of Coltman’s British Itinerary on folio 243 recto opposite (D08790; CXXIII 240).5