J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > England and Wales Colour Studies c.1825 ... > Studies for Published 'England and ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner St Michael's Mount from near Marazion c.1828

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘St Michael's Mount from near Marazion’ c.1828
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
St Michael’s Mount from near Marazion c.1828
D25187
Turner Bequest CCLXIII 65
Watercolour on white wove paper, 348 x 489 mm
Inscribed in red ink ‘65’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This colour study has been compared by Andrew Wilton to broad oil sketches Turner made in Rome in 1828, ‘connected with the evolution’ of his mythological painting Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1829 (National Gallery, London),1 and suggestive of the Italian coast near Naples. See Tate D40192 for a watercolour study which appears rather closer in composition to that painting.
On the plausible grounds of its similarity to the pencil view in the 1811 Ivy Bridge to Penzance sketchbook (Tate D40816, D08910; Turner Bequest CCXV 30a–31), showing St Michael’s Mount, Cornwall, looking north-west across Mount’s Bay towards Penzance from near Marazion, Eric Shanes has suggested this as a sunset study for a subject for Turner’s Picturesque Views in England and Wales.2 However, as he notes, the later watercolour Mount St Michael, Cornwall of about 1836 (University of Liverpool),3 engraved in 1838 for the Picturesque Views (Tate impressions: T04612, T06129), shows a lower, beach-level view westwards in less clement weather;4 Tate D25195 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 73) is a possible study of the clouds in the 1836 watercolour.
See Tate D25514 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 390), a study related to the present work, and also the introductions to the present subsection of identified subjects and the overall England and Wales ‘colour beginnings’ grouping to which this work has been assigned.
1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.183–5 no.330, pl.331 (colour).
2
Shanes 1997, pp.27, 39, 83, 94, 95, 101, 104.
3
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.403 no.880, reproduced.
4
See Shanes 1997, p.83.
Technical notes:
Shanes describes the present paper as the ‘same’ as that of another likely England and Wales ‘colour beginning’ (Tate D25161; Turner Bequest CCLXIII 39).1
1
Ibid., pp.94, 101.
Verso:
Blank; inscribed in pencil ‘AB 94 P | O’ and ‘D25187’ top left, upside down; inscribed ‘CCLXIII.65’ and ‘D25187’ bottom right
The ‘AB’ number corresponds with the endorsement on one of the parcels of works sorted by John Ruskin during his survey of the Turner Bequest, in this case classified by him as ‘Colour effects. Finer’.1

Matthew Imms
March 2013

1
Transcribed in Finberg 1909, II, p.814.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘St Michael’s Mount from near Marazion c.1828 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-st-michaels-mount-from-near-marazion-r1144286, accessed 26 April 2024.