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

This is the fourth of five sketches from this sketchbook that record subjects in the Whitehaven area on the north-west coast of Cumbria. The present subject (and three of the others) is the village of Parton, about two miles north of Whitehaven, taken from the rocky foreshore just south of the village, looking north towards Cunning Point in the centre distance. Turner sketched the same subject from a slightly more distant viewpoint and on a larger scale in a drawing known as A Harbour Surrounded by Hills (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia).1 This has sometimes been thought to be one of a group of leaves originally from the dismembered Petworth sketchbook (Tate D07512–D07536; D40276; Turner Bequest CIX) but such a connection is unconfirmed.

For Parton see notes to D12249; Turner Bequest CLV 8.

Verso:

Inscribed in pencil (?by one of the Executors of the Turner Bequest) in pencil ‘Sched 164.6’. The majority of pages in this sketchbook are similarly inscribed (for the significance of this see notes to D12241, D12244; Turner Bequest CLV 2, 4a).

Also inscribed by an unknown hand in pencil ‘Unmounted/ CLV/ Box 97’, bottom right, presumably in relation to a previous Turner Bequest box system in which the drawing was stored.