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 > Devon Rivers, No.2 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?The Paper Mill on the River Erme at Ivybridge 1814

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?The Paper Mill on the River Erme at Ivybridge’ 1814
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 46 Recto:
?The Paper Mill on the River Erme at Ivybridge 1814
D09723
Turner Bequest CXXXIII 46
Pencil on white wove paper, 110 x 178 mm
Part watermark ‘ows | 2’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘46’ bottom right, descending vertically, and ‘294’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CXXXIII 46’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Following a view of the bridge on the Erme at Ivybridge on folio 45 recto (D09722), this and the sketch on folio 47 recto (D09724) may show the 1787 Stowford paper mill a little upstream of Harford Road, since entirely rebuilt and now Arjo Wiggins (Ivybridge) Ltd.1 A photograph from the 1880s apparently shows the main building Turner sketches here.2
Turner’s oil Ivy Bridge Mill, Devonshire (private collection),3 exhibited at his own London gallery in 1812, shows a nearby wooded view on the Erme, based on a sketch in the 1811 Ivy Bridge to Penzance sketchbook (Tate D08938; Turner Bequest CXXV 47), but the buildings sketched there are largely hidden by foliage.
1
See ‘Heritage Trail’, Ivybridge Town Guide, accessed 16 November 2011, http://www.burrows.co.uk/ivybridge/.
2
‘From River, c1886, Ivybridge’, Francis Frith, accessed 16 November 2011, http://www.francisfrith.com/ivybridge,devon/photos/ivybridge_8304/.
3
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.86–7 no.122, pl.128.
Technical notes:
As with the sketches on folios 45 recto and 47 recto (D09722, D09724), the pencil work is coarser than most of the careful topographical studies up to this point in the sketchbook.

Matthew Imms
July 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘?The Paper Mill on the River Erme at Ivybridge 1814 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-paper-mill-on-the-river-erme-at-ivybridge-r1147274, accessed 06 November 2025.