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 > Shipwreck (1) Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Study for 'The Shipwreck' c.1805

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Study for 'The Shipwreck'’ c.1805
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 17 Verso:
Study for ‘The Shipwreck’ circa 1805
D05391
Turner Bequest LXXXVII 16
Pen and ink and blue wash on cream laid paper, 118 x 185 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘16’ bottom right, inverted
Stamped in black ‘LXXXVII 16’ top right, inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Drawn with the sketchbook inverted. In Sketches and Drawings Finberg assigns this sketch to the Shipwreck (2) sketchbook (Tate D05428–D05445; D40697–D40700; Turner Bequest LXXXVIII) and appears to describe it twice, both as ‘page 16’ and as ‘Another of the sketches’ that he reproduces as pl.XXI. Unique in this book in being tinted with blue rather than brown or grey washes, and as Finberg observes ‘a little more fully realised than some of the others’, this lively sketch is for the stricken ship in the right background of Turner’s picture The Shipwreck (Tate N00476).1 See Introduction to the sketchbook for the picture. The fishing boat on the right of the picture is also anticipated here, but with a smaller sail.

David Blayney Brown
January 2006

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.43 no.54 (pl. 64).

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Study for ‘The Shipwreck’ c.1805 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 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-study-for-the-shipwreck-r1139183, accessed 20 April 2024.