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 Two Studies of the Bows and Beakhead of the'Temeraire' 1805

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Two Studies of the Bows and Beakhead of the'Temeraire'’ 1805
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 31 Recto:
Two Studies of the Bows and Beakhead of the‘Temeraire’ 1805
D05478
Turner Bequest LXXXIX 24
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 184 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘24’ top left, inverted
Stamped in black ‘LXXXIX 24’ top left, inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Drawn with the sketchbook inverted. These two studies of the beakhead of a warship, with a fiddle head, have been identified as of the Temeraire by Pieter van der Merwe.1 A smaller sketch of the same feature is on folio 30 verso (D05477; Turner Bequest LXXXIX 23a).
Turner must have sketched this from memory or from an eye-witness description, as the Temeraire did not join the Victory at Sheerness and Chatham after Trafalgar but went into Portsmouth Dockyard for repairs lasting more than a year.2

David Blayney Brown
January 2010

1
In conversation with the author, 19 January 2010.
2
Judy Egerton, Turner: The Fighting Temeraire, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery, London 1995, pp.33–4

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Two Studies of the Bows and Beakhead of the‘Temeraire’ 1805 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2010, 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-two-studies-of-the-bows-and-beakhead-of-thetemeraire-r1139288, accessed 26 April 2024.