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 1811 > Cornwall and Devon Sketchbook [pseudo ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Clovelly from near Buck's Mills 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Clovelly from near Buck's Mills’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 90 Recto:
Clovelly from near Buck’s Mills 1811
D41373
Turner Bequest CXXV a 90
Pencil on white wove paper, 140 x 215 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?W]’ lower centre
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ’90.’ top right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXXV.A – 90’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The view is north-west from near Buck’s Mills, along the North Devon coast to Clovelly and Windbury Point, with Lundy Island in the distance in the Bristol Channel. There is a similar study from further west and lower down on folio 65 recto (D41347). The profile of the coast is similar to that seen in the watercolour Clovelly Bay of about 1822 (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin),1 engraved in 1824 for the Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England (see the concordance of the series in the 1811 tour introduction). For other views in the area see under folio 43 recto (D41322).
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 noted the subject as ‘Coast near Clovelly’ in a manuscript listing,2 while C.F. Bell described it in his own notes as ‘Precipitous coast’.3 Figures usually corresponding to Finberg’s MS catalogue page numbers, which differ from Bell’s sequence, are inscribed on the verso of most sheets.
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.354 no.472, reproduced.
2
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) 82.
3
C.F. Bell, MS addenda, [after 1928], tipped into a copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.I, p.356C, as CXXVa 90.
Verso:
Blank, save for inscription by Edwin Fagg in pencil ‘182 | 82’ bottom right. There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet. At the foot of the supporting stub, ‘35’ is inscribed in pencil.

Matthew Imms
July 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Clovelly from near Buck’s Mills 1811 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2011, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-clovelly-from-near-bucks-mills-r1137521, accessed 16 July 2025.