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 Long Island and Saddle Rocks from near Bossiney 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Long Island and Saddle Rocks from near Bossiney’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 31 Recto:
Long Island and Saddle Rocks from near Bossiney 1811
D41307
Turner Bequest CXXV a 31
Pencil on white wove paper, 142 x 215 mm
Embossed stamp ‘BATH | [crown] | VELLUM’ within oval cartouche
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ‘31’ top right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXXV.A – 31’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s viewpoint is the Cornish coast east of Tintagel (for which see under folio 9 recto; D41284) and Bossiney, looking north-east to Long Island, towards the top left, with Saddle Rocks below and to the left of it. There is a view of these features from further away on folio 72 recto (D41354). There are nearby views on folios 74 recto and 81 recto (D41356, D41363).
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 ‘Rocks on coast’ in a manuscript listing,1 while C.F. Bell described it tentatively in his own notes as nearby ‘Boscastle, Cornwall(?)’.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) 63.
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 31.
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 ‘Boscastle?’ bottom left; inscribed by Edwin Fagg in pencil ‘164 | 63’ bottom right. There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet.

Matthew Imms
July 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Long Island and Saddle Rocks from near Bossiney 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-long-island-and-saddle-rocks-from-near-bossiney-r1137455, accessed 26 April 2024.