Joseph Mallord William Turner

From the cliffs of the Torrs, west of Ilfracombe, Turner looks across Bull Point and the Bristol Channel to Lundy Island, on the horizon over twenty miles to the west. There is a similar view on folio 76 recto (D41358) and a sketch from further east on folio 77 recto (D41359). On the recto (D41342) is a view in the opposite direction, towards Ilfracombe; see under folio 37 recto (D41314) for other Ilfracombe drawings.

As discussed in the introduction, the pages of this ‘sketchbook’ appear to have originally been loose sheets. They are not recorded in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory of the Bequest, although subsequently, not recognising the subject, he transcribed Turner’s scrawled main inscription as ‘“Do.”’ in a manuscript listing1 (i.e. ‘Ditto’, sometimes used by Turner to refer to a topographical inscription on a preceding sheet). In his own notes, C.F. Bell described the subject as ‘Precipitous sea-coast’.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.

Technical notes:

The sheet has been creased at the bottom edge and is slightly wrinkled, possibly as a result of exposure to damp.