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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Severn Valley, Chester and Peak District ... > Worcester and Shrewsbury Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Back View of a Man Fishing ?1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Back View of a Man Fishing’ ?1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 69 Verso:
Back View of a Man Fishing ?1831
D18591
Turner Bequest CCXI 42
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 191 mm
Partial watermark ‘R Ba | 18’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil with notes on fishing (see main catalogue entry)
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards centre right
Stamped in black ‘CCXI – 42’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The drawing shows the back view of a man in a hat and coat, equipped with a fishing rod and apparently wading in water up to his knees. It is unclear whether it was made in the course of Turner’s 1831 Midlands tour or on another occasion. The lower third of the page is taken up with associated notes:
[... ?thin trou... | Provide yourself with plenty of gentles in the | lowermost corner of your Jacket pocket If the | aforesaid be old so much the better because they | the maggots) will work through the same cleaning | them the while. Wade up to an [?inclination] | of 45 or thereabouts in the stream and you are sure | to have fish before or behind1
‘Gentles’ is a fisherman’s term for maggots, used as bait. Any published source for these precise instructions has not been established. Ian Warrell has noted that the figure was redrawn by Turner to be engraved for the Houghton Fishing Club Album; a related sketch was with a London art dealer in about 2009.2 The exclusive Houghton Club was founded in 1822, and is based on the River Test at Stockbridge in Hampshire.3
Fishing was a favourite hobby of Turner’s.4 Compare the fishing party on folio 4 verso (D22157); for other figure studies in this sketchbook, see the entry for inside the front cover (D41053). The name inscribed on the recto of this leaf (D18592; Turner Bequest CCXI 42a) appears to relate to angling, although the exact chain of connection is yet to be established.
1
Based on transcription in Finberg 1909, II, p.645.
2
Ian Warrell, notes from 1993 and later in Tate catalogue files.
3
See ‘The Houghton Club’, FishPal, accessed 18 October 2013, http://www.fishpal.com/England/TestandItchen/TheHoughtonClub/?dom=Britain; and Jeremy Musson, ‘Clubs You Cannot Join’, Country Life, accessed 18 October 2013, http://www.countrylife.co.uk/countryside/article/279683/Clubs-you-cannot-join.html.
4
See Hamilton 2001, p.110.
Technical notes:
The page has been correctly reattached to the jagged stub left behind in the current sketchbook at a point where Finberg noted: ‘Leaf torn out’1 (see also the Technical notes in the sketchbook’s Introduction). He did not recognise the connection with this leaf, instead suggesting it as one of two which ‘may have belonged ... at one time’2 to the Paris, Seine and Dieppe sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest CCVI), with which he grouped it.3 The other, Finberg’s CCVI 43/43a (Tate D40495, D40518) is also no longer associated with the Paris book.

Matthew Imms
April 2014

1
Finberg 1909, II, p.736.
2
Ibid., p.645.
3
See Warrell 1999, p.253 note 43.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Back View of a Man Fishing ?1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-back-view-of-a-man-fishing-r1148924, accessed 18 April 2024.