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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > East Sussex c.1806-20 > Vale of Heathfield Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Stormy Sea and Sky by Daylight, Possibly a Study Relating to the Eddystone Lighthouse c.1813

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Stormy Sea and Sky by Daylight, Possibly a Study Relating to the Eddystone Lighthouse’ c.1813
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 39 Verso:
A Stormy Sea and Sky by Daylight, Possibly a Study Relating to the Eddystone Lighthouse circa 1813
D10256
Turner Bequest CXXXVII 38
Watercolour on white wove paper, 181 x 228 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘38’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom centre
Stamped in black ‘CXXXVII 38’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This vigorous watercolour has been described as ‘of a freedom normally associated with the late 1810s, or even later’.1 The watercolour studies on folios 40 recto opposite, 41 recto and 42 recto (D10257, D10258, D10260; CXXXVII 39, 40, 41) perhaps represent the Eddystone Lighthouse, off Plymouth, which Turner may have visited in 1813, producing a finished watercolour of it at night by 1817. As the present study perhaps relates to them, albeit without any indication of the lighthouse itself, it is here dated to about the former year. There is a fuller discussion under D10258.
The page is now bound as folio 39 verso, with the image inverted. The recto is blank, but inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘38’ at the top right and by another hand in pencil ‘38a’ at the bottom right.

Matthew Imms
May 2011

1
Butlin, Wilton and Gage 1974, p.66.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Stormy Sea and Sky by Daylight, Possibly a Study Relating to the Eddystone Lighthouse c.1813 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2011, 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-a-stormy-sea-and-sky-by-daylight-possibly-a-study-relating-r1131299, accessed 19 April 2024.