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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > East Sussex c.1806-20 > Vale of Heathfield Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?The Eddystone Lighthouse in a Storm by a Full Moon c.1813

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?The Eddystone Lighthouse in a Storm by a Full Moon’ c.1813
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 42 Recto:
?The Eddystone Lighthouse in a Storm by a Full Moon circa 1813
D10260
Turner Bequest CXXXVII 41
Watercolour on white wove paper, 181 x 228 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘41’ top left, inverted
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom left
Stamped in black ‘CXXXVII 41’ top left, inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Along with watercolours on folios 40 recto and 41 recto (D10257, D10258; CXXXVII 39, 40) this study perhaps represents the Eddystone Lighthouse, off Plymouth, which Turner may have visited in 1813, producing a finished watercolour of it at night, without a moon, by 1817. A possibly related watercolour of an empty sea and sky is on folio 39 verso (D10256; CXXXVII 38). There is a fuller discussion of the subject and dating under D10258.
The composition is inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliated sequence.

Matthew Imms
May 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘?The Eddystone Lighthouse in a Storm by a Full Moon c.1813 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 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-the-eddystone-lighthouse-in-a-storm-by-a-full-moon-r1131303, accessed 19 April 2024.