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 in the Distance 1814

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Tamar Valley, with Prospect Tower in the Distance’ 1814
Folio 15 Verso:
The Tamar Valley, with Prospect Tower in the Distance 1814
D40831
Pencil on white wove paper, 82 x 119 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page turned horizontally, this is a slight sketch of a hill in the Tamar Valley, upon which is a faint outline of Prospect Tower. The drawing on this side of the leaf is non mentioned in Finberg’s 1909 Turner Bequest Inventory.1
There are two other depictions of the tower on the recto and folio 16 recto opposite (Tate D10001, D10002). Turner made further sketches in the Devon Rivers, No.1 sketchbook (Tate D09656, D09659; CXXXII 141, 142a) and in the Vale of Heathfield sketchbook (D10265; CXXXVII 43a).
For other views along the Tamar Valley in this sketchbook, see folios 3 to 16 (Tate D09989–D10002).
The verso D10001, is of a related sketch of the Tamar Valley and with Prospect Tower in the distance.

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 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-in-the-distance-r1213905, accessed 31 July 2026.