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

Finberg proposed that this colour study shows Lancaster Sands. Turner made the potentially hazardous crossing of Morecambe Bay at low tide when returning from the Lake District in 1816,1 and subsequently made a first version of the subject in his watercolour Lancaster Sands of about 1818 (Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery),2 with its obscuring rain and consequent lack of specific topography in the distance. The version of about 1826 (British Museum, London),3 engraved in 1828 for the Picturesque Views in England and Wales (Tate impressions: T04534, T04535), shows brighter conditions and the Lake District mountains across the horizon. Both show a combination of beach and shallow tidal seawater in the foreground with which the present study might be compared, but the hills rising to the left do not correspond to either finished watercolour and the identification can be fairly readily discounted. For a possible Lancaster Sands ‘colour beginning’ see Tate D25132 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 10).

Eric Shanes has suggested that this work shows Rye, as an undeveloped subject for England and Wales, ⁴ presumably as a variant on the early 1820s watercolour Rye, Sussex (National Museum Wales, Cardiff),5 engraved in 1824 for the Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England (Tate impressions: T04407, T04408, T05270–T05273, T05989). The Southern Coast watercolour shows a flood on the River Brede during construction of the junction of the Royal Military Canal just outside Winchelsea, looking east towards Rye on its hill to the left and Camber Castle and the low-lying ground towards the coast on the right.6 The swirling waters and distant rising ground to the left correspond, although the correlation may be fortuitous.

Dunstanburgh Castle, on its promontory above the coast of Northumberland, has also been suggested as the subject.7 Turner first visited the coastal ruin in 1797 and produced watercolours and paintings of it until as late as 1834, including a watercolour design of about 1806–7 for the Liber Studiorum (Tate D08118; Turner Bequest CXVI Q) under which the various versions are discussed in detail. Although many show the castle on the rising skyline to the left with the sea to the right in the foreground, an arrangement loosely comparable to the present study, there seems little to indicate the castle itself here. For a possible Dunstanburgh colour study, see Tate D25313 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 191).

The actual location of the scene, if any, is likely to remain unconfirmed. Inés Richter-Musso has discussed the sheet among colour studies showing ‘strips of earth that conceptually define the scenes as coastal landscapes, though they lack topographical indicators’.8 A date of c.1825–30 has been adopted here, in line with that in recent exhibition literature.

See also the Introductions to the present subsection of tentatively identified but unrealised subjects and the overall England and Wales ‘colour beginnings’ grouping to which this work has been assigned.

Technical notes:
There is stopping out towards the horizon on the left and a little in the clouds; scratching out is evident at the brightest point on the land and in rough diagonal strokes through the clouds at the top right. A tear extending 45 mm from the centre of the bottom edge has been repaired.

Verso:
Blank, save for a little blue colour offset at the bottom centre.