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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Work for Earls Egremont and Lonsdale ... > Kirkstall Lock Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner From Parton, Looking South to Whitehaven and St Bees Head 1809

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘From Parton, Looking South to Whitehaven and St Bees Head’ 1809
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
From Parton, Looking South to Whitehaven and St Bees Head 1809
D12251
Turner Bequest CLV 10
Pencil on white wove paper, 186 x 231 mm (top and bottom left corners missing)
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in red ink ‘10’, bottom right
Stamped in black in ‘CLV 10’, bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is the third of five sketches from this sketchbook that record subjects in the Whitehaven area on the north-west coast of Cumbria. The present subject (and three of the others) is the village of Parton, about two miles north of Whitehaven, taken from the rocky foreshore, looking south towards Whitehaven in the centre distance, and St. Bees Head in the distance to the right. The sketch served as the basis of a watercolour painted about 1809–10, Whitehaven from near Parton (Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester),1 although in the watercolour the format is made more panoramic than in the sketch.
For Parton see notes to D12249; Turner Bequest CLV 8.
1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, pp.359–60 no.526, as ‘Yorkshire coast 1805–10’
Verso:
Not visible since stuck down, but an inscription (?by one of the Executors of the Turner Bequest) in pencil ?‘Sched 164.7’ may be seen through the recto. The majority of pages in this sketchbook are similarly inscribed (for the significance of this see notes to Tate D12241, D12244; Turner Bequest CLV 2, 4a).

David Hill
June 2009

How to cite

David Hill, ‘From Parton, Looking South to Whitehaven and St Bees Head 1809 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2009, 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-from-parton-looking-south-to-whitehaven-and-st-bees-head-r1134663, accessed 24 April 2024.