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 The Coast towards Bull Point and Lundy from the Torrs, near Ilfracombe 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Coast towards Bull Point and Lundy from the Torrs, near Ilfracombe’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 76 Recto:
The Coast towards Bull Point and Lundy from the Torrs, near Ilfracombe 1811
D41358
Turner Bequest CXXV a 76
Pencil on white wove paper, 140 x 215 mm
Faint embossed stamp ‘BATH | [crown] | VELLUM’ within oval cartouche
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?corn]’ and ‘corn’ centre left, and ‘[?sheer ...]’ bottom left
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ‘76’ top right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXXV.A – 76’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s viewpoint is the cliffs of the Torrs, west of Ilfracombe, looking across Bull Point and the Bristol Channel to Lundy Island, over twenty miles to the west on the horizon. There is a similar view on folio 61 verso (D41343) and a view from further east on folio 77 recto (D41359). See under folio 37 recto (D41314) for other Ilfracombe views.
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 similarly in his own notes as ‘Rocky coast’.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.357, as CXXV(a) 87.
2
C.F. Bell, MS addenda, [after 1928], tipped into a copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.I, p.356C, as CXXVa 76.
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 ‘188 | 87’ bottom right. There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet, and some abrasion down the right-hand edge which have been repaired

Matthew Imms
July 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Coast towards Bull Point and Lundy from the Torrs, near Ilfracombe 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-the-coast-towards-bull-point-and-lundy-from-the-torrs-near-r1137506, accessed 25 April 2024.