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 1811 > Cornwall and Devon Sketchbook [pseudo ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Bridge over the River Camel at Wadebridge, Looking West 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Bridge over the River Camel at Wadebridge, Looking West’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 4 Recto:
The Bridge over the River Camel at Wadebridge, Looking West 1811
D41279
Turner Bequest CXXV a 4
Pencil on white wove paper, 141 x 215 mm
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ‘4’ top right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXXV.A – 4’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The view is from the north bank of the River Camel, looking downstream to the medieval bridge, which originally had seventeen arches of which thirteen are visible today after several campaigns of widening and rebuilding.1 Little else remains identifiable from between the later buildings on Egloshayle Road. The sketch on folio 5 recto (D41280) shows the same face of the bridge, but from the opposite bank, near the small bridge shown here on the left. There are distant views of Padstow, near the mouth of the Camel, from near Wadebridge on folios 30 recto and 86 recto (D41306, D41368).
As discussed in the introduction, the pages of this ‘sketchbook’ appear to have originally been loose sheets, and are not recorded in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory of the Bequest, although he subsequently noted the subject as ‘Bridge with 13 arches showing, & bldgs. on either side’ in a manuscript listing,2 while C.F. Bell mistakenly described it in his own notes as ‘Bridge at Looe, Cornwall’.3 There are views of Looe in the contemporary Devonshire Coast, No.1 and Ivy Bridge to Penzance sketchbooks (Tate; Turner Bequest CXXIII and CXXV respectively); see under Tate D08887 (Turner Bequest CXXV 17a) for details.
Figures usually corresponding to Finberg’s MS catalogue page numbers, which differ from Bell’s sequence, are inscribed on the verso of most sheets.
1
See ‘Wadebridge Ancient Bridge’, Engineering Timelines, accessed 15 February 2011, http://www.engineering-timelines.com/scripts/engineeringItem.asp?id=904.
2
A.J. Finberg, MS addenda, [circa 1928–39], tipped into a copy of his A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.I, opposite p.356, as CXXV(a) 47.
3
C.F. Bell, MS addenda, [after 1928], tipped into a copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.I, p.356A, as CXXVa 4.
Technical notes:
The sheet is slightly wrinkled, possibly as a result of exposure to damp.
Verso:
Blank, save for inscriptions: inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ‘Looe Cornwall’ bottom left; inscribed by Edwin Fagg in pencil ‘148 | 47’ bottom right. There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet.

Matthew Imms
July 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Bridge over the River Camel at Wadebridge, Looking West 1811 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2011, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-bridge-over-the-river-camel-at-wadebridge-looking-west-r1137427, accessed 21 November 2024.