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 Spanish Ensign and other Flags 1805

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Spanish Ensign and other Flags’ 1805
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 21 Recto:
Spanish Ensign and other Flags 1805
D05459
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 184 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil alongside left flag ‘Red’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘977’ top right, inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Drawn with the sketchbook inverted. When the book was restitched, this leaf was flipped, the side that Finberg treated as the recto becoming the verso. The larger flag is a Spanish ensign. The verso (D05458; Turner Bequest LXXXIX 12) has a sketch of the Spanish flagship Santissima Trinidad and a note in which Turner reminds himself to ask about the colouring of her ‘standard’. The ensign would have been red and yellow.

David Blayney Brown
March 2006

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Spanish Ensign and other Flags 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-spanish-ensign-and-other-flags-r1139272, accessed 20 April 2024.