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 Godrevy Island from St Ives 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Godrevy Island from St Ives’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 50 Verso:
Godrevy Island from St Ives 1811
D41330
Turner Bequest CXXV a 50a
Pencil on white wove paper, 140 x 215 mm
Faint embossed stamp ‘BATH | [crown] | VELLUM’ within oval cartouche
Inscribed in pencil ‘126 | 27’ top left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This slight profile of a distant coastline and island appears to show shows Godrevy Island and the mainland to its south-east, looking north-east across St Ives Bay, in a partial repetition of the detailed view of the bay on the recto of the present leaf (D41329), but from a different viewpoint with trees in the middle distance.
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,1 nor is the present drawing noted in Finberg’s or C.F. Bell’s later manuscript listings.2
1
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909.
2
See A.J. Finberg, MS addenda, [circa 1928–39], tipped into a copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Rook, vol.I, opposite p.356; and C.F. Bell, MS addenda, [after 1928], tipped into another copy of Finberg 1909 at the same location, vol.I, p.356B.
Technical notes:
There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet, which is slightly wrinkled, possibly as a result of exposure to damp.

Matthew Imms
July 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Godrevy Island from St Ives 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-godrevy-island-from-st-ives-r1137478, accessed 04 April 2026.