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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Cheshire, Derbyshire, North Wales ... > Tabley No.2 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Description of a Floating Object (Inscription by Turner) 1808

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Description of a Floating Object (Inscription by Turner)’ 1808
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 89 Recto:
Description of a Floating Object (Inscription by Turner) 1808
D06983
Turner Bequest CIV 88
Inscribed by Turner in pencil (see main catalogue entry) on white laid paper, 162 x 98 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘88’ top right, running vertically
Stamped in black ‘CIV 88’ top right, running vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s inscription reads:
A white Body floating down a River | (the Dee) altho’ relieved the whole | surface from the water, which had | on its inclined plane a dun cloud | reflected, yet on the same tint | the reflection of the white Body had | not any light or white reflection, but | on the contrary had its reflection dark
See Introduction for Turner’s travels in North Wales in 1808, and his fondness for fishing which doubtless accounted for the sight of this object floating past him in the River Dee. From his description, jotted down as he watched, it might have been a dead fish, or as Hamilton suggests the float at the end of Turner’s fishing line; Bailey, in an aside, remarks of the ‘Body’ that ‘whether human or not [Turner] doesn’t say’.
Turner wrote a longer passage on reflections in water and related matters, prompted by or continuing the present one, in the Tabley No.3 sketchbook (Tate D07114, D40630; Turner Bequest CV). Observations like these were grist to Turner’s mill as he collected ideas for his lectures as Professor of Perspective at the Royal Academy; Lecture 5, first given in 1811, was devoted to ‘Reflexes’ (reflections) and included a passage on reflections in water or on objects in it.

David Blayney Brown
May 2010

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Description of a Floating Object (Inscription by Turner) 1808 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 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-description-of-a-floating-object-inscription-by-turner-r1133739, accessed 20 September 2024.