Joseph Mallord William Turner Watchet, with the Coast towards Minehead 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 173 Verso:
Watchet, with the Coast towards Minehead 1811
D08687
Turner Bequest CXXIII 170a
Turner Bequest CXXIII 170a
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 170a, as ‘Watchet, Somersetshire’.
1910
Alexander J. Finberg, Turner’s Sketches and Drawings, London 1910, pp.99–102, pl.LV (a).
1969
Graham Reynolds, Turner, London 1969, ill.78.
1979
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.353 under no.464.
1981
Eric Shanes, Turner’s Rivers, Harbours and Coasts, London 1981, p.152.
1987
Andrew Wilton, Turner in his Time, London 1987, pl.141.
1990
Eric Shanes, Turner’s England 1810–38, London 1990, pp.265 under no.234, 286 note 214.
2006
Andrew Wilton, Turner in his Time, revised ed., London 2006, reproduced p.90 (colour).
Finberg noted this sketch as the basis for the untraced watercolour Watchet, Somersetshire of about 1818,1 engraved in 1820 for the Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England2 (see the concordance of the series in the 1811 tour introduction). He analysed it at length, suggesting that the finished design probably ended up little resembling the actual site, but relating various elements of it directly to the seemingly casual pencil strokes here and evoking the process as an almost magical feat of ‘imaginative interpretation’.3
As clarified in the engraving, the shapes in the foreground are rocks, and the zigzags lines of posts sunk into the harbour. The viewpoint is east of the harbour, near where the coastal railway line now runs around public gardens above the later Eastern Pier; the near side of the harbour is now a marina accessed through a lock gate. In the distance is the hill above Minehead, to the west-north-west across Blue Anchor Bay. The same hill also appears in the Southern Coast view of Dunster and Minehead, based on the drawing made a little to the west on folio 165 verso (D08672; CXXIII 162a).
One of the small views on folio 171 verso (D08683; CXXIII 168a) may also be of Watchet.
Technical notes:
The leaf was once detached from the sketchbook, presumably for the sake of exhibiting the drawing, although there is no specific record of this. The fore-edge of the leaf is now not quite flush with the rest of the block.
Matthew Imms
June 2011
How to cite
Matthew Imms, ‘Watchet, with the Coast towards Minehead 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