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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > East Anglia, Sussex and Yorkshire 1824 > Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?Happisburgh c.1824

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Happisburgh’ c.1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 39 Verso:
?Happisburgh c.1824
D18233
Turner Bequest CCIX 39 a
Pencil on white wove paper, 115 x 118 mm
Watermarked ‘al[lee] | 18[19]’
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘?Happisburgh [...]’ bottom left (inverted)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
These cursory sketches were rendered with the sketchbook turned upside down. They may depict the village of Happisburgh on the Norfolk coast. Houses and buildings giving onto the seafront and a church tower, possibly St Mary’s, is rendered in profile. A boat is shown beached at left in the rear view. Turner has dashed off an inscription at top right which reads ‘Happisburgh [...]’. See also Tate D18228–D182232; Turner Bequest CCIX 37–39.
Turner produced a vignette design of Happisburgh, entitled Hasboro Sands (Happisburgh is pronounced ‘Haysborough’), for the East Coast publication, though it was never engraved (see general introduction).1

Alice Rylance-Watson
January 2015

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.405 no.898.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘?Happisburgh c.1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-happisburgh-r1181115, accessed 06 May 2025.