J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > West Country and Yorkshire 1814-17 > Review at Portsmouth Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Copper Mines near New Bridge on the River Tamar, Gunnislake, from the South 1814

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Copper Mines near New Bridge on the River Tamar, Gunnislake, from the South’ 1814
Folio 12 Recto:
Copper Mines near New Bridge on the River Tamar, Gunnislake, from the South 1814
D09998
Turner Bequest CXXXVI 12
Pencil on white wove paper, 82 x 119 mm
Inscribed in red ink ‘12’ bottom left, descending vertically (smudged)
Stamped in black ‘CXXXVI – 12’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Eric Shanes identified the location of this drawing and those on folios 9, 11, and 171 verso (Tate D09995, D09997, D10190) as those that Turner made ‘in and around Gunnislake’1 a large village in east Cornwall.
With the page turned horizontally, this sketch is a view from the south of Gunnislake’s New Bridge on the River Tamar centre foreground. To the left of the bridge, Turner illustrates the various structures, including buildings, chimneys, water wheels, and the engine house associated with the historical Gunnislake Clitters Mine, which is situated along the bank of the River Tamar. Although the mine was operational for the industrial extraction of copper, tin, arsenic, and wolfram between the years 1820 and 1919, it had been previously utilized from the 1700s for the extraction of copper, the infrastructure of which Turner depicts in this drawing.2
There are further views of New Bridge in the Vale of Heathfield sketchbook (Tate D10267, D10269, D10271, D10273; CXXXVII 44a–47a) and the Devon Rivers, No.1 sketchbook (Tate D09611, D09622, D09626, D09637; CXXXII 117a, 123, 125, 131). Owing to their strong resemblance, this collection of sketch studies of this site may have been used as studies for the major oil painting Crossing the Brook (Tate N00497),3 exhibited in 1815.
For other views along the Tamar Valley in this sketchbook, see folios 3 to 16 (D09989–D10002).
1
Eric Shanes, extended draft of ‘The West Country, 1814’ section for Young Mr Turner: The First Forty Years 1775–1815, New Haven and London 2016, email to Matthew Imms, 20 December 2012, Tate catalogue files, unpaginated, note 97.
2
See ‘Gunnislake Clitters Mine Cornwall’, Cornwall Calling, accessed 12 September 2024, https://www.cornwall-calling.co.uk/mines/callington/gunnislake-clitters.htm<u; and </u>‘Gunnislake Clitters Mine’ in ‘Historic England Research Records’, Heritage Gateway, accessed 12 September 2024, <link url="https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=438041&resourceID=19191"&gt;https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=438041&resourceID=19191.
3
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.93–4 no.130, pl.123 (colour).
Verso:
Blank

Vanessa Otim
March 2025

How to cite

Vanessa Otim, ‘Copper Mines near New Bridge on the River Tamar, Gunnislake, from the South 1814’, catalogue entry, March 2025, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, July 2026, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/copper-mines-near-new-bridge-on-the-river-tamar-gunnislake-from-the-south-r1213901, accessed 31 July 2026.