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 > Corfe to Dartmouth Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Lyme Regis from Charmouth Beach 1811

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Lyme Regis from Charmouth Beach’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 29 Verso:
Lyme Regis from Charmouth Beach 1811
D08841
Turner Bequest CXXIV 29a
Pencil on white wove paper, 170 x 209 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Lyme from Charmouth’ bottom right (now very faint)
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg noted that this sketch is the basis for the watercolour Lyme Regis, Dorsetshire: A Squall of about 1812 (Glasgow Museums),1 engraved in 1814 for the Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England2 (see the concordance of the series in the 1811 tour introduction). As Howard Hanley shows, the prospect is to the south-west from the beach at Charmouth,3 the same viewpoint as for the sketch on the recto, looking towards Golden Cap to the east (D08840). There are further views of Lyme in the contemporary Devonshire Coast, No.1 sketchbook (see under Tate D08429; Turner Bequest CXXIII 36).
Turner did not use the present sketchbook again until Exeter (see folio 30 verso; D08842), over thirty miles away on his route along the Devon Coast, drawing meanwhile in the smaller Devonshire Coast, No.1.
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.351 no.451, reproduced.
2
Finberg 1909, I, p.354; see also Wilton 1979, p.351; Shanes 1981, p.152; and Hanley 1992, p.32.
3
Hanley 1992, p.32; compare modern photograph, ibid., ‘Cat.68’.
Technical notes:
Three small tears to the edges have been repaired.

Matthew Imms
February 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Lyme Regis from Charmouth Beach 1811 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 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-lyme-regis-from-charmouth-beach-r1137322, accessed 25 April 2024.