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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > North Wales 1799-1801 > Dolbadarn Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: West Country Place Names c.1799

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Inscription by Turner: West Country Place Names’ c.1799
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 119 Verso:
Inscription by Turner: West Country Place Names c.1799
D02175
Turner Bequest XLVI 119a
Ink on white wove paper, 130 x 79 mm
Inscribed by Turner in brown ink with extensive notes (see main catalogue entry)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The following list of places made in pen and brown ink, inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, takes up the whole page and continues on the recto (D02174):
[?‘888’ or ‘838’]
Somersetshire
6 Langport
Athelney Athelney A
Bath . Abby – –
Bristol Ch – 1148
Bruton – P100512 Wells
Cleve A 1188
Dunster P– WC. 3 Minehead
Glastonbury A 954
Henton p 1227 Phillip Norton
Keynsham A 1171 6 Bath
Montacute P H 1 3 Martock
Wells – Stoke Carey Martock
Witham
Castles
Dunster 3 Minehead
Ilchester -
Nunney 3 Frome
Stoke Carey Bridgwater
Wells Palace
Farley Frome
Devon.
Axminster C.C.
Crediton do
Ford Abbey. Axminster
Tavistock A
Okehampton C.
Rougemont
Powderham C 9 Exeter
Finberg identified this list of West Country sites as copied from James Moore’s A List of the Principal Castles and Monasteries in Great Britain (London 1798), with the Somerset places taken from page 37, and the Devon ones from page 9, Turner only noting Moore’s ‘starred items’.1 The etcher and collector John Postle Heseltine noted Moore as the source independently. Turner’s main visits to the West Country would come in 1811, 1813 and 1814.

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

1
A.J. Finberg (died 1939), MS note in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, opposite p.118.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Inscription by Turner: West Country Place Names c.1799 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-inscription-by-turner-west-country-place-names-r1180034, accessed 27 April 2024.