'A Fishing Smack off Dover', Joseph Mallord William Turner

Artwork details

Artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775‑1851)

Title

A Fishing Smack off Dover

From Small Calais Pier Sketchbook

Turner Bequest LXXI

Date 1802

MediumGraphite on paper

Dimensionssupport: 112 x 187 mm

Collection

Tate

Acquisition Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

Reference

D04268

Turner Bequest LXXI 66

View this artwork by appointment, at Tate Britain's Prints and Drawings Rooms

Turner's sketchbooks

View this artwork in the Small Calais Pier Sketchbook

Catalogue entry

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851

Folio 20 Recto:

A Fishing Smack off Dover 1802

D04268
Turner Bequest LXXI 66

Pen and brown ink and a little brown wash on wove paper prepared with reddish brown wash, 112 x 187 mm
Stamped in black ‘LXXI 66’ bottom right

Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

References

Numbered by Finberg as folio 66 of this sketchbook, this has since been rebound as folio 20. Dover Castle is clearly visible. Turner must have sketched it and the cliffs of the British shore as he sailed away to France.

Verso:

Slight brown ink offset of a rowing boat from the sketch Ships in a Breeze from folio 21 of this sketchbook (D04274). Inscribed in red ink by John Ruskin ‘868’

David Blayney Brown
April 2003

Read this catalogue entry in full

This catalogue entry is part of: David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, December 2012.