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 Bude: The Coast from Wrangle Point to Lower Sharpnose Point 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Bude: The Coast from Wrangle Point to Lower Sharpnose Point’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 40 Recto:
Bude: The Coast from Wrangle Point to Lower Sharpnose Point 1811
D41318
Turner Bequest CXXV a 40
Pencil on white wove paper, 140 x 215 mm
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ‘40’ top right, repeated immediately below in another hand
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXXV.A – 40’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch has been noted in relation to the watercolour Ilfracombe, North Devon of about 1813–16 (private collection),1 engraved in 1818 for the Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England (see the concordance of the series in the 1811 tour introduction), along with those on folios 37 recto and verso, 38 recto and 39 recto (D41314–D41317).2 However, the profiles of the various headlands appear to correspond with those running up the Cornish coast beyond Wrangle Point, north of Bude Haven, towards Lower Sharpnose Point, some four miles to the north. The beach here is characterised by dramatic sandstone formations, eroded from vertical strata.
It may be that a sketch of ‘sand-landing’ among jagged coastal rocks in the contemporary Devonshire Coast, No.1 sketchbook (Tate D08368; Turner Bequest CXXIII 4) shows activities here or nearby. For other Bude sketches in the present book, see under folio 35 recto (D41311); the same or similar rock formations are shown on folios 63 recto and 68 recto (D41345, D41350).
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 ‘Rocky coast’ in a manuscript listing,3 as did C.F. Bell in his own notes.4 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
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.352 no.462, reproduced.
2
Shanes 1981, p.152.
3
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) 69.
4
C.F. Bell, MS addenda, [after 1928], tipped into a copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.I, p.356B, as CXXVa 40.
Technical notes:
The sheet is slightly wrinkled, possibly as a result of exposure to damp.

Matthew Imms
July 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Bude: The Coast from Wrangle Point to Lower Sharpnose Point 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-bude-the-coast-from-wrangle-point-to-lower-sharpnose-point-r1137466, accessed 19 April 2024.