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 Tintagel: A Watermill near the Castle 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Tintagel: A Watermill near the Castle’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 53 Recto:
Tintagel: A Watermill near the Castle 1811
D41333
Turner Bequest CXXV a 53
Pencil on white wove paper, 141 x 215 mm
Faint embossed stamp ‘BATH | [crown] | VELLUM’ within oval cartouche
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ‘53’ top right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXXV.A – 53’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The view is to the down the Vale of Avalon, running north towards the sea at Tintagel Haven. Tintagel Castle is out of sight beyond the rocks to the left, but appears in other views of the mill (now gone) on folio 54 recto and folio 55 recto (D41334, D41335). For other views of Tintagel, see under folio 9 recto (D41284).
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 ‘Building among rocks’ in a manuscript listing,1 while C.F. Bell described it in his own notes as ‘Mine buildings with water-wheels’.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) 60.
2
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 53.
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 ‘160 | 60’ bottom right. There is a small ink blot at the lower centre and glue stains at the corners of the sheet.

Matthew Imms
July 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Tintagel: A Watermill near the Castle 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-tintagel-a-watermill-near-the-castle-r1137481, accessed 23 September 2024.