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 > Stonehenge Sketchbook [pseudo-Finberg ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Cheddar Gorge: High Rock from above the Road 1811

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Cheddar Gorge: High Rock from above the Road’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 6 Recto:
Cheddar Gorge: High Rock from above the Road 1811
D41379
Turner Bequest CXXV b 6
Pencil on white wove paper, 222 x 180 mm
Watermark ‘H | 1808’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?Stone Dark in holes]’ bottom right
Inscribed by C.F. Bell in pencil ‘6’ top left, ascending vertically
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CXXV.B – 6’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch appears to show High Rock from the slope north of the road through Cheddar Gorge, lightly indicated in the foreground. There are what seem to be similar views on folios 2 recto, 4 recto and 7 recto (D41375, D41377, D41380). Folios 1 recto–8 recto (D41374–D41381) are all views of Cheddar Gorge, most apparently made in a concentrated area around the Horseshoe Bend.
As discussed in the introduction, the pages of this ‘sketchbook’, which appear to have originally been loose sheets, are not recorded in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory of the Bequest, although he subsequently noted the subject as ‘Rocks – “Stone dark in holes (?)”’ in a manuscript list,1 while C.F. Bell described it in his own notes as ‘Rocky gorge, “Stone ... (?)”’.2 Figures corresponding to Finberg’s MS catalogue page numbers, which differ from Bell’s sequence, are inscribed on the verso of each sheet.
Although folios 7 recto and 8 recto (D41380, D41381) are both listed in the ‘Catalogue’ checklist of Turner and the Scientists, where they are described as ‘Devon’ views and as no.106 and fig.121,3 it appears from Tate registrars’ records that only the present page (the one actually reproduced) was exhibited – it would not in any case have been feasible to exhibit two successive rectos at once.
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.357, as CXXV(b) 13.
2
C.F. Bell, MS addenda, [after 1928], tipped into a copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.I, p.356C, as CXXVB 6.
3
Hamilton 1998, p.141.
Technical notes:
The sheet is wrinkled, possibly as a result of exposure to damp.
Verso:
Blank, save for inscription by Edwin Fagg in pencil ‘217 | 13’ bottom left, descending vertically (partly trimmed). There are glue stains at the corners of the sheet.

Matthew Imms
May 2010

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Cheddar Gorge: High Rock from above the Road 1811 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2010, 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-cheddar-gorge-high-rock-from-above-the-road-r1137528, accessed 21 November 2024.