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 Padstow and the Camel Estuary 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Padstow and the Camel Estuary’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 86 Recto:
Padstow and the Camel Estuary 1811
D41368
Turner Bequest CXXV a 86
Pencil on white wove paper, 141 x 215 mm
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ‘86.’ top right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXXV.A – 86’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg’s identification is correct, as Padstow, with the tower of St Petroc’s Church, is seen in the distance to the south-west beside the Camel Estuary. The viewpoint is the St Columb Major–Wadebridge road west of Whitecross. There is another view of Padstow from a few miles south-west on the same road on folio 30 recto (D41306; CXXV a 30), and views of Wadebridge on folios 4 recto and 5 recto (D41279, D41280).
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 correctly as ‘Near Padstow’ in a manuscript listing,1 while C.F. Bell described it in his own notes as ‘Expanse of moorland seen from a height’.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) 46.
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 86.
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 ‘146 | 46’ bottom right. There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet.

Matthew Imms
July 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Padstow and the Camel Estuary 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-padstow-and-the-camel-estuary-r1137516, accessed 18 September 2024.