J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Thames sketchbooks c.1804-14 > Wey, Guildford Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Figures Struggling Ashore after a Shipwreck: ?Ulysses 1805

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Figures Struggling Ashore after a Shipwreck: ?Ulysses’ 1805
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 7 Recto:
Figures Struggling Ashore after a Shipwreck: ?Ulysses 1805
D06189
Turner Bequest XCVIII 7
Pen and ink and brown wash on white laid paper, 117 x 182 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘7’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘XCVIII 7’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
As in an unidentified landscape composition without figures on folio 6 (D06188), Turner’s imagination seems here to occupy the same classic territory as in other historical/mythological studies in the sketchbook. The suggestion of a shipwreck, possibly involving Ulysses, is David Hill’s and convincing in the light of a study on folio 3 (D06183) of Ulysses’s encounter with Nausica following his shipwreck on her island.

David Blayney Brown
July 2008

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Figures Struggling Ashore after a Shipwreck: ?Ulysses 1805 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2008, 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-figures-struggling-ashore-after-a-shipwreck-ulysses-r1130373, accessed 23 April 2024.