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 and Yorkshire 1814-17 > Devon Rivers, No.1 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Endsleigh Cottage and the Tamar Valley 1814

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Endsleigh Cottage and the Tamar Valley’ 1814
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 129 Verso:
Endsleigh Cottage and the Tamar Valley 1814
D09634
Turner Bequest CXXXII 129a
Pencil on white wove paper, 90 x 152 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Diana Cook and Dorothy Kirk have identified the scene as the Tamar Valley with Endsleigh Cottage, south-west of Milton Abbot on the Devon side, about half way between Launceston and Gunnislake (roughly six miles to the north-west and south-east respectively as the crow flies).1 The house, now a hotel, was designed in 1810 by Jeffry Wyatt (later Sir Jeffry Wyatville) as a Picturesque cottage orné for the Dowager Duchess of Bedford, amid grounds designed by Humphry Repton within a wider setting of plantations along the river,2 and so would have been brand new at the time of Turner’s visit.
Although Cook and Kirk suggest Castle Head (about half a mile west of the house) as the viewpoint,3 the slight but recognisable elements of the house recorded here appear to comprise its south façade; Turner was probably on the eastern, Devon bank in the grounds above the Tamar, which passes immediately below the house before turning south, as apparently indicated here towards the right. The Cornish side to the left is now covered by the dense Wareham Wood, making the exact viewpoint difficult to establish. There are closer views on folio 130 recto opposite, where the present sketch continues a little, and folio 130 verso (D09635, D09636).
The Bedford estate is mentioned in a note in the contemporary Devon Rivers, No.2 sketchbook (Tate D09732; Turner Bequest CXXXIII 51a).
For other views along the Tamar Valley, see under folio 114 verso (D09606).

Matthew Imms
June 2014

1
Cook and Kirk 2001 pp.47–8; Diana Cook and Dorothy Kirk, Turner in the Tamar Valley: Following in Turner’s Footsteps along the River Tamar, Drakewalls 2009, pp.52–4.
2
Nikolaus Pevsner, South Devon, The Buildings of England, Harmondsworth 1952, p.127.
3
Cook and Kirk 2001 p.49, reproducing modern photograph from Castle Head by Cook; see also Diana Cook and Dorothy Kirk, Turner in the Tamar Valley: Following in Turner’s Footsteps along the River Tamar, Drakewalls 2009, p.54, with detail of same photograph.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Endsleigh Cottage and the Tamar Valley 1814 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-endsleigh-cottage-and-the-tamar-valley-r1147183, accessed 24 April 2024.