‘Launceston, Cornwall’ by Joseph Mallord William Turner went under the hammer in Christie’s sale in New York on January 28 — and realised a phenomenal price.

Christie’s sale of ‘Old Master and British Drawings’ totalled £4,242,534, with 83% sold by value and 73% sold by lot.

The sale concluded with four exceptional watercolours by JMW Turner, R.A. (London 1775-1851), covering the entire arch of the great British artist’s career. However, the painting which may be of most interest to readers, was a pencil and watercolour piece entitled Launceston, Cornwall which was offered at a guide price of between $400,000 to $600,000.

Ian Warrell, an independent curator and author, provided the following information for Christie’s catalogue which gives a more in depth history of the piece which clearly depicts Launceston’s imposing castle and the church of St Mary Magdalene.

Ian wrote: “Although this skilfully realized watercolour was one of the first to be engraved for Turner’s landmark series of ‘Picturesque Views in England and Wales’ in 1827, it is based on pencil sketches made well over a decade earlier, dating from a visit to Launceston in 1814, during the last of three tours of Devon and Cornwall. Turner was initially drawn to the region in 1811 to undertake research for a different project, the ‘Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England’, but having family and friends in these western counties gave him the excuse to return to an area he found richly inspiring. By 1814 he was also developing with his publisher W B Cooke yet another topographical scheme, ‘The Rivers of Devon’, and it was while exploring the River Tamar that Turner travelled to Launceston.

“During his short stay, Turner observed the town from all points of the compass, seeking vantage points that permitted him to showcase the relationship of the castle to the landscape, as well as the town’s other landmarks, such as the church of St Mary Magdalene and the medieval gateways. Using two different sized sketchbooks, he gradually defined the angle that best suited his purposes, which was from the road leading down from St Stephen’s Hill, to the north-west. A page in each of the notebooks sets out the raw essence of the finished watercolour, including the dense summer growth on the trees. 

“But the sketches provided no information about the weather or the fall of light, which make such a vital contribution to the success of the watercolour. This fact explains why, when he began to work from his sketches many years later, Turner used the back of this sheet to test the underlying blocks of blue, yellow and warm colour in his composition, indicating where shadows might fall, as well as where the white paper needed to remain untouched. 

“Perhaps the most striking detail in the finished work is the dark figure on horseback, his toes neatly pointed out, to whom the viewer is empathetically drawn (much like the lonely wanderers in the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich). In fact this incident was not invented; Turner had actually recorded a traveller heading down the road in front of him. Even so, he was able to imbue lived experience with cultural resonance. For it has been noted that the rider is positioned directly below the castle, and that the shape of his hat echoes that of the fortification. Expanding on this point, Martha Mel Edmunds has noted that the castle’s most famous prisoner was George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, who had refused to remove his hat at his trial.

“Alongside his later Swiss views, Turner’s ‘England and Wales’ watercolours are regarded as his most important.”

The hammer finally fell on January 28 at $471,000 (£360,643) for Turner’s Launceston, Cornwall.