This month we feature an engraving created from a sketch by JMW Turner. It is one of four engravings from the University’s Fine Art Collection currently on loan to the Museum of Barnstaple and North Devon, for its exhibition Turner in Barnstaple which runs from 20 July – 12 October 2024.

Turner travelled around the coast of Devon and Cornwall in 1811. During his trip, he created sketches of the scenery in watercolours, oils and pencil. This tour of Devon and Cornwall was initiated by two entrepreneurial engravers, the brothers William and George Cooke, who commissioned Turner to tour all of the Southern coast of England to sketch images from which they and their team could make a series of engravings. The plan for this collaboration was that they would produce a collection of 48 engravings based on Turner’s sketches, in a collection to be sold in instalments, entitled Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England.

Engravings could be reproduced in large quantities, and had the potential to reach a large audience. However, they were very complex to create and needed a high level of skill and a lot of time to produce. This resulted in only a few engraved images from the collection being published at any one time. Each instalment would consist of three engravings, with two vignettes and a descriptive text.

The venture relied on subscribers – people who were expected to continue to pay for each instalment over a long period of time. Unfortunately, costs mounted and the Cooke brothers and Turner fell out – the whole venture was abandoned in 1826.

However, we are lucky that nineteen of the engravings in the series that did get produced were scenes from Devon and Cornwall, like this one of Combe Martin.

Turner and his West Country Connections

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 - 1851) was an English Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist. He is known for his expressive colouring, impressionistic style and imaginative landscapes, often featuring striking skies and turbulent seas.

Although Turner was born in London, his father hailed from South Molton, about twenty miles from Combe Martin in North Devon, the seaside village featured in this engraving. It is possible that Turner kept in touch and visited his family when he was in the area in 1811 – one uncle in Barnstaple and another in Exeter. Years later, when Turner died, the children of these relatives (Turner’s cousins), are recorded as having successfully contested his will, so they clearly felt they still had a family connection with the artist.

About the engraving

The idea for the series Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England was conceived during the Napoleonic wars (1803 – 1815). At this time it was difficult for people to travel to mainland Europe for leisure. So people turned their attention to UK destinations for holidays, and engravings of beauty spots within the UK served to expand this interest in visiting places 'at home'.

This representation of Combe Martin is not intended to be a faithful replica of the scene - rather it injects a sense of romanticism and artistic creativity - with the dark precipitous cliffs and the striking cloud formations. However, the scene is not completely idealised - Turner chooses to include people at work in the foreground, perhaps acknowledging that even beautiful seaside villages are places where people have to graft hard for a living.

Turner made sketches of Combe Martin in 1811 which were later interpreted by an engraver to make this final rendering of the view you see here. It is interesting to note that Turner sketched Combe Martin in 1811 yet the engraving was not produced until 1825. With his sketches, often quite impressionistic, as his only aide memoire, Turner was able to guide the engravers to create a good likeness of the scene, even years later.

About the engraver

Combe Martin as it is today.

Photograph by Jack 1956 (Wikimedia Commons)

Acknowledgements

Sam Smiles, Light into Colour: Turner in the South West (Tate St Ives) catalogue, 2000

Wikipedia

Wikimedia Commons Images