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 ?Buck's Mills from the Beach 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Buck's Mills from the Beach’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 60 Recto:
?Buck’s Mills from the Beach 1811
D41341
Turner Bequest CXXV a 60
Pencil on white wove paper, 139 x 215 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Brook’ bottom left
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ‘60’ top right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom left of centre
Stamped in black ‘CXXV.A – 60’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The view may be eastwards along the North Devon coast, looking towards the village of Buck’s Mills on the right, with the coast of Barnstaple or Bideford Bay running round to the north-east beyond. There is a view towards Clovelly from Buck’s Mills in the contemporary Devonshire Coast, No.1 sketchbook (Tate D08766; Turner Bequest CXXIII 223).
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 and Turner’s inscription as ‘Coast near Clovelly. “Brook”’ in a manuscript listing,1 while C.F. Bell described it in his own notes as ‘Precipitous sea-coast [with] “Brook” in foreground’.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) 80.
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 60.
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 ‘180 | 80’ bottom right. There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet, and some dark rubbing or offsetting which matches that on the recto of folio 88 (D41370), showing that the two sheets were once in contact.

Matthew Imms
July 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘?Buck’s Mills from the 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-bucks-mills-from-the-beach-r1137489, accessed 25 April 2024.