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 1813 > Plymouth, Hamoaze Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Water Mill beside a Bridge, Possibly at St John 1813

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Water Mill beside a Bridge, Possibly at St John’ 1813
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 33 Recto:
A Water Mill beside a Bridge, Possibly at St John 1813
D09252
Turner Bequest CXXXI 33
Pencil on white wove paper, 95 x 157 mm
Part watermark ‘Ivy’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘33’ bottom right, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CXXXI – 33’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Eric Shanes has related this drawing, made the page turned horizontally, to a ‘colour beginning’ (Tate D25364; Turner Bequest CCLXIII 242) which he tentatively identifies as ‘?St John, near Plymouth’, although this identification remains unconfirmed.1 Finberg titled the watercolour simply ‘The path up the hill’.2 St John is near Antony, south of the St Germans or Lynher River west of Plymouth. A sequence of views around Trematon Castle, north of the river, begins on folio 36 recto (D09255). The subjects as far as folio 127 recto (D09358) are all identified or presumed sites within a few miles in and around Plymouth, suggesting a series of fairly short excursions.
1
Shanes 1997, pp.94, 102.
2
Finberg 1909, II, p.832.
Verso:
Blank

Matthew Imms
April 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Water Mill beside a Bridge, Possibly at St John 1813 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 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-a-water-mill-beside-a-bridge-possibly-at-st-john-r1147979, accessed 10 May 2024.