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 > Cornwall and Devon Sketchbook [pseudo ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Land's End: Looking North to Pedn-mên-du and Cape Cornwall 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Land's End: Looking North to Pedn-mên-du and Cape Cornwall’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 28 Recto:
Land’s End: Looking North to Pedn-mên-du and Cape Cornwall 1811
D41304
Turner Bequest CXXV a 28
Pencil on white wove paper, 140 x 215 mm
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ‘28’ top right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXXV.A – 28’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The viewpoint is the rocky Dr Syntax’s Head at Land’s End, looking north along the cliffs above the Gamper to the Pedn-mên-du headland on the right in the middle distance, with Cape Cornwall and the off-shore Brisons rocks across Whitesand Bay towards the top left. There is a similar view, from a little further east, on folio 29 recto (D41305). The rock high on the left and those in the sea below are seen again at a different angle in the view to the west on folio 23 recto (D08942). For other views at and around Land’s End, see under folio 22 recto (D08941; CXXV 50, bound as CXXV a 22).
As discussed in the introduction, the pages of this ‘sketchbook’ appear to have originally been loose sheets, and are not recorded in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory of the Bequest, although he subsequently noted the subject as ‘Cliffs’ in a manuscript listing,1 while C.F. Bell described it correctly in his own notes as ‘Near Lands End’.2 Figures usually corresponding to Finberg’s MS catalogue page numbers, which differ from Bell’s sequence, are inscribed on the verso of most sheets.
1
A.J. Finberg, MS addenda, [circa 1928–39], tipped into a copy of his A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.I, opposite p.356, as CXXV(a) 15.
2
C.F. Bell, MS addenda, [after 1928], tipped into a copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.I, p.356A, as CXXVa 28.
Technical notes:
The sheet is slightly wrinkled, possibly as a result of exposure to damp.
Verso:
Blank, save for inscriptions: inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ‘near Land’s End?’ bottom left; inscribed by Edwin Fagg in pencil ‘114 | 15’ bottom right. There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet.

Matthew Imms
July 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Land’s End: Looking North to Pedn-mên-du and Cape Cornwall 1811 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 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-lands-end-looking-north-to-pedn-men-du-and-cape-cornwall-r1137452, accessed 24 April 2024.