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 > Devon Rivers, No.2 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Plympton House, St Maurice's Church and the Castle, with Saltram Park Beyond 1814

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Plympton House, St Maurice's Church and the Castle, with Saltram Park Beyond’ 1814
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 43 Recto:
Plympton House, St Maurice’s Church and the Castle, with Saltram Park Beyond 1814
D09719
Turner Bequest CXXXIII 43
Pencil on white wove paper, 110 x 178 mm
Part watermark ‘Fell | 18’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘6’ on building at bottom centre
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘43’ bottom right, descending vertically, and ‘294’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CXXXIII 43’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The prospect, now obscured by housing in the foreground, is westwards from on or near the Ridgeway to St Maurice’s Church and Plympton Castle, with Saltram Park (see also under folio 39 recto; D09715) rising on the hillside beyond.
The first of two Plympton sketches in the 1811 Devonshire Coast, No.1 sketchbook (Tate D08561, D08565; Turner Bequest CXXIII 101a, 103a) shows a similar view. The roof in the foreground is that of Plympton House (now St Peter’s Care Home) off George Lane, built around 1700 in the ‘William-and-Mary tradition’,1 with six bays on its east front, as Turner notes, and the pediments of its north and south fronts seen in profile.
There is another Plympton view on folio 42 recto (D09718).

Matthew Imms
July 2014

1
See Nikolaus Pevsner, South Devon, The Buildings of England, Harmondsworth 1952, p.245.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Plympton House, St Maurice’s Church and the Castle, with Saltram Park Beyond 1814 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-plympton-house-st-maurices-church-and-the-castle-with-r1147270, accessed 01 January 2025.