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 > Devonshire Coast, No.1 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner East Looe and the Coast beyond West Looe 1811

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘East Looe and the Coast beyond West Looe’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 115 Verso:
East Looe and the Coast beyond West Looe 1811
D08582
Turner Bequest CXXIII 112a
Pencil on white wove printing paper, 75 x 117 mm
Part watermark ‘W Di’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘E W Looe’ bottom right, ascending diagonally
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s viewpoint is the cliffs east of East Looe, looking south past the church and pier to Hannafore Point with St George’s or Looe Island in the distance. The coast in the opposite direction is shown on folio 114 verso (D08580; CXXIII 111a).
Eric Shanes has noted this sketch, along with that on folio 116 recto opposite (D08583; CXXIII 113), as a source for the watercolour East and West Looe, Cornwall of about 1815 (Manchester Art Gallery),1 engraved in 1818 for the Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England2 (see the concordance of the series in the 1811 tour introduction). However, the direct source of the composition, as recognised by Finberg and also noted by Shanes,3 is a drawing in the Ivy Bridge to Penzance sketchbook (Tate D08887; Turner Bequest CXXV 17a), under which other views of Looe in the same book are discussed.
There are other local views in the present sketchbook on folios 117 recto and verso, folio 118 verso and folio 132 verso (D08585, D08586, D08588, D08614; CXXIII 114, 114a, 115a, 129a).

Matthew Imms
June 2011

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.352 no.461, reproduced.
2
Shanes 1981, p.152.
3
Finberg 1909, I, p.355; Shanes 1981, p.152.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘East Looe and the Coast beyond West Looe 1811 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 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-east-looe-and-the-coast-beyond-west-looe-r1137059, accessed 26 April 2024.