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 > Review at Portsmouth Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Tamar Valley at Calstock, towards the Prospect Tower and Cothele House 1814

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Tamar Valley at Calstock, towards the Prospect Tower and Cothele House’ 1814
Folio 6 Recto:
The Tamar Valley at Calstock, towards the Prospect Tower and Cothele House 1814
D09992
Turner Bequest CXXXVI 6
Pencil on white wove paper, 82 x 119 mm
Inscribed in red ink ‘6’ bottom left, descending vertically (smudged)
Stamped in black ‘CXXXVI – 6’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner scholar Eric Shanes has identified the location of this sketch, made with the page turned horizontally, to be the Tamar Valley at Calstock, towards Prospect Tower and Cothele House. He notes that when Turner visited Calstock ‘he once again ascended the hill to the west of the town. From there he sketched the Prospect Tower and Cotehele House to the south’ in one of his medium–sized sketchbooks, in the pocket one he had previously used in Portsmouth, and in the largest sketchbook he had in his possession.’1
For other views along the Tamar Valley in this sketchbook, see folios 3 to 16 (D09989–D10002).
The verso, D40830, features a related sketch of the Tamar Valley.

Vanessa Otim
March 2025

1
Eric Shanes, extended draft of ‘The West Country, 1814’ section for Young Mr Turner: The First Forty Years 1775–1815, New Haven and London 2016, email to Matthew Imms, 20 December 2012, Tate catalogue files, unpaginated, note 91.

How to cite

Vanessa Otim, ‘The Tamar Valley at Calstock, towards the Prospect Tower and Cothele House 1814’, catalogue entry, March 2025, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, July 2026, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/the-tamar-valley-at-calstock-towards-the-prospect-tower-and-cothele-house-r1213894, accessed 31 July 2026.