Joseph Mallord William Turner Sidmouth and the Coast to the East 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 206 Verso:
Sidmouth and the Coast to the East 1811
D08734
Turner Bequest CXXIII 203a
Turner Bequest CXXIII 203a
Pencil on white wove writing paper, 75 x 117 mm
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.351, CXXIII 203a, as ‘Town on coast’.
1981
Eric Shanes, Turner’s Rivers, Harbours and Coasts, London 1981, p.37 under no.77, ill.9, p.152.
1984
Craig Hartley, Turner Watercolours in the Whitworth Art Gallery, exhibition catalogue, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester 1984, p.47 under no.37.
1990
Eric Shanes, Turner’s England 1810–38, London 1990, p.138 under no.110, ill.15.
1997
Charles Nugent and Melva Croal, Turner Watercolors from Manchester, exhibition catalogue, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis 1997, p.74 under no.43.
Sidmouth is shown from the west, with Salcombe Hill beyond and a continuation of the Devon coastline towards Beer Head above the main drawing. Turner did not develop this subject for the Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast project; William Collins’s 1821 Sidmouth, published as one of the half-page plates in the series, shows a roughly comparable view (Tate impressions: T05372, T05373; see the introduction to the 1811 tour).
Eric Shanes has suggested that the present drawing and that on folio 208 recto (D08737; CXXIII 205) were ‘synthesized’ to form the composition of the watercolour of Sidmouth of about 1824 (Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester),1 engraved for The Ports of England in 1828 (but not published until 1856 in The Harbours of England).2 The buildings sketched here, including the tower of St Giles and St Nicholas’s Church, are rendered rather schematically in the watercolour, where the viewpoint is shifted out to sea.
Matthew Imms
June 2011
How to cite
Matthew Imms, ‘Sidmouth and the Coast to the East 1811 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2011, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www