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 St Ives from Porthminster Beach 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘St Ives from Porthminster Beach’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 48 Recto:
St Ives from Porthminster Beach 1811
D41327
Turner Bequest CXXV a 48
Pencil on white wove paper, 141 x 215 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?sand]’ bottom left
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ‘48’ top right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom left
Stamped in black ‘CXXV.A – 48’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s viewpoint is from Porthminster Beach, looking north-west to the parish church on the left, with the Downalong area of St Ives beyond the harbour and pier and St Nicholas’s Chapel on the summit of the Island to the right. The rocks in the foreground are now crowned by the Malakoff, near the railway station. Turner drew a similar view from above the beach on folio 50 recto (D41329), presumably on the same occasion.
This is one of four consecutive, detailed drawings of St Ives and its surroundings (see also folios 47, 49 and 50 recto; D41326, D41328, D41329), the identification of which has been credited to the contemporary St Ives artist Roy Ray;1 there is a further view bound towards the end of the book (folio 82 recto; D41364).
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 mistakenly as ‘Penzance (?)’ in a manuscript listing,2 while C.F. Bell described it in his own notes as ‘Seaport town with church with square tower’.3 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
Brown in Lewis and Brown 1985, p.97.
2
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) 26.
3
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 48; entry later annotated in other hands ‘Dartmouth?’ and ‘?St Ives’.
Technical notes:
The sheet is slightly wrinkled, possibly as a result of exposure to damp.
Verso:
Blank, save for inscription by Edwin Fagg in pencil ‘124 | 26’ bottom right. There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet.

Matthew Imms
July 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘St Ives from Porthminster Beach 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-st-ives-from-porthminster-beach-r1137475, accessed 26 April 2024.