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 Falmouth and Pendennis Castle from St Mawes Castle 1811

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Falmouth and Pendennis Castle from St Mawes Castle’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 148 Verso:
Falmouth and Pendennis Castle from St Mawes Castle 1811
D08643
Turner Bequest CXXIII 145a
Pencil on white wove writing paper, 75 x 117 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
In identifying this subject, Eric Shanes has observed that the main upper view here is a continuation from the right of the main drawing below.1 There appears to be a third coastal outline at the top right. In the lower drawing, Turner looked south-west towards the sea beyond the Tudor St Mawes Castle2 in the foreground, with Pendennis Castle on its promontory across Carrick Roads in the distance. Pendennis Castle’s middle section is repeated at the respective edges of the two sections (to the right below and to the left above), while in the upper drawing Falmouth is shown in the centre, due west of St Mawes.
Turner followed the sketch(es) in his watercolour of Falmouth of about 1825 (Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts),3 engraved in 1828 for The Ports of England (but not published until 1856 in The Harbours of England). Instead of treating the two parts of the original panoramic view as a continuum, he used the left-hand two thirds of the upper section (seen from the east) for the distance of the watercolour and moved the St Mawes fort (drawn here from the north-east) in front of the distant hill, significantly distorting the true relationship between the fort and the background.4 As the central tower is on a circular plan this shift is less apparent than it might have been.
For other views in and around St Mawes and Falmouth see under folio 7 verso (D08375).

Matthew Imms
June 2011

1
Shanes 1981, p.38, and 1990, p.142; see also Smiles 1988, pp.54, 57 note 2.
2
See [Adèle Campbell (ed.)], Heritage Unlocked: Guide to Free [English Heritage] Sites in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, London 2004, p.89.
3
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.388 no.762, reproduced.
4
See Shanes 1981, p.38, further emphasising the orientations respectively as ‘from the south’ and ‘from the north’; amended in 1990, p.142 as ‘due-easterly’ and ‘north-east’.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Falmouth and Pendennis Castle from St Mawes Castle 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-falmouth-and-pendennis-castle-from-st-mawes-castle-r1137120, accessed 25 April 2024.