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 Capstone Hill, Ilfracombe 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Coast towards Bull Point and Lundy from Capstone Hill, Ilfracombe’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 77 Recto:
The Coast towards Bull Point and Lundy from Capstone Hill, Ilfracombe 1811
D41359
Turner Bequest CXXV a 77
Pencil on white wove paper, 140 x 215 mm
Faint embossed stamp ‘BATH | [crown] | VELLUM’ within oval cartouche
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ‘77.’ top right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXXV.A – 77’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
From the west side of Capstone Hill, Ilfracombe, Turner looks along the North Devon coast towards Bull Point, the Bristol Channel and Lundy Island, on the horizon over twenty miles to the west. Granville Road now runs over the broad slope on the left in the middle distance, with a narrow car park set into the cliffs below. There are studies showing Lundy from west of the town on folios 61 verso and 76 recto (D41343, D41358). See under folio 37 recto (D41314) for other local 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) 85.
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 77.
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 ‘186 | 85’ bottom right. There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet.

Matthew Imms
July 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Coast towards Bull Point and Lundy from Capstone Hill, 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-capstone-hill-r1137507, accessed 16 April 2024.