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': Fore Part of Starboard Side 1805

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The 'Victory': Fore Part of Starboard Side’ 1805
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 16 Verso:
The ‘Victory’: Fore Part of Starboard Side 1805
D05486
Turner Bequest LXXXIX 28a
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 184 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Together with the port-side view of the Victory on folio 18 (D05489; Turner Bequest LXXXIX 30), perhaps another on folio 17 (D05487; Turner Bequest LXXXIX 29) and the sky study on folio 17 verso (D05488), this is probably the origin of Turner’s picture showing Nelson’s flagship in three positions, from port, starboard and bows, usually known as The Victory Returning from Trafalgar, possibly shown in Turner’s Gallery in 1806, and bought by Walter Fawkes (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut).1 See Introduction to the sketchbook for discussion of the picture, its title and subject matter. Turner also made a drawing of a similar composition, probably intended for engraving in the Liber Studiorum but not used (Tate D08183; Turner Bequest CXVIII c).
Finberg states that ‘the margin’ had an instruction by John Ruskin to ‘Lay down by moistening only’. In the present arrangement of the book this appears on a stub to which folio 20 (D05448; Turner Bequest LXXXIX 3) is attached.

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, pp.46–7 no.59 (pl.69).

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘The ‘Victory’: Fore Part of Starboard Side 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-fore-part-of-starboard-side-r1139264, accessed 23 April 2024.