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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Marine subjects c.1803-14 > Nelson Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The 'Victory': Port Side, Smaller Vessels Alongside 1805

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The 'Victory': Port Side, Smaller Vessels Alongside’ 1805
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 17 Recto:
The ‘Victory’: Port Side, Smaller Vessels Alongside 1805
D05487
Turner Bequest LXXXIX 29
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 184 mm
Stamped in black ‘LXXXIX 29’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Faded from exposure in the First Loan Collection. Finberg’s entry, written when the leaf was out of the book on this national tour, noted; ‘Probably connected with the subject of “Nelson”, if not actually one of the leaves of this sketchbook’. Despite Finberg’s reservations, the leaf surely belongs to this sketchbook.
Finberg’s note must refer to Turner’s picture The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory (Tate N00480),1 exhibited at Turner’s Gallery in 1806, for which see the Introduction to this sketchbook. The more likely connection, together with the starboard view of the Victory on folio 16 verso (D05486; Turner Bequest LXXXIX 28a), another port-side study on folio 18 (D05489; Turner Bequest LXXXIX 30) and the sky study on the verso (D05488), is with The Victory Returning from Trafalgar, also possibly shown in Turner’s Gallery in 1806 (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut).2 See Introduction to the sketchbook and entry for D05486 for the picture and associated work.
In this drawing, Turner concentrates on the bows, deck and stern and shows smaller vessels alongside.

David Blayney Brown
March 2006

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.46 no.58 (pl.68).
2
Ibid., pp.46–7 no.59 (pl.69).

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘The ‘Victory’: Port Side, Smaller Vessels Alongside 1805 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2006, 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-the-victory-port-side-smaller-vessels-alongside-r1139265, accessed 23 April 2024.