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 Mount's Bay and St Michael's Mount from the West 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Mount's Bay and St Michael's Mount from the West’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 13 Recto:
Mount’s Bay and St Michael’s Mount from the West 1811
D41288
Turner Bequest CXXV a 13
Pencil on white wove paper, 140 x 215 mm
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ’13.’ top right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXXV.A – 13’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
St Michael’s Mount is seen in outline at the middle of the sketch, looking south-east from near Gulval, to the north-east of Penzance. There are similar views on folio 7 recto (D41282), under which other views of the bay are discussed, and, from slightly further away, on folios 8 recto (D41283), 11 recto (D41286), and 12 recto (D41287).
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 ‘View on coast with St. Michls Mt. in distance’ in a manuscript listing,1 while C.F. Bell similarly described it in his own notes as ‘Mounts Bay and St Michael’s Mount’.2 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
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) 42.
2
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 13.
Technical notes:
The sheet is stained or darkened towards the bottom, and is slightly wrinkled, possibly as a result of exposure to damp.
Verso:
Blank, save for inscriptions: inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ‘Mounts Bay [?West]’ bottom left; inscribed by Edwin Fagg in pencil ‘142 | 42’ bottom right. There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet.

Matthew Imms
July 2011

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Mount’s Bay and St Michael’s Mount from the 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-mounts-bay-and-st-michaels-mount-from-the-west-r1137436, accessed 21 November 2024.