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 with Prospect Tower on the Skyline in the Distance 1814

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Tamar Valley with Prospect Tower on the Skyline in the Distance’ 1814
Folio 6 Verso:
The Tamar Valley with Prospect Tower on the Skyline in the Distance 1814
D40830
Pencil on white wove paper, 82 x 119 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This drawing, on the verso of D09992 (Turner Bequest CXXXVI 6), is not mentioned in Finberg’s 1909 Turner Bequest Inventory.1 With the page turned horizontally and the outer edge of the sketchbook at the top, Turner appears to be crudely marking out the landscape of the Tamar Valley. A small vertical line indicates a tower in the distance on the skyline, presumably the Prospect Tower of which there are further sketches on folios 15 recto and verso and 16 recto (D10001, D40831, D10002).
For other views along the Tamar Valley in this sketchbook, see folios 3 to 16 (D09989–D10002). The recto (D09992; Turner Bequest CXXXVI 6), is a related sketch of the Tamar Valley.

Vanessa Otim
March 2025

1
See A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.389.

How to cite

Vanessa Otim, ‘The Tamar Valley with Prospect Tower on the Skyline in the Distance 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-with-prospect-tower-on-the-skyline-in-the-distance-r1213895, accessed 31 July 2026.