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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Spring Tour of Northern France 1845 > Boulogne Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Rain Clouds and a Fisherman, ?near Boulogne 1845

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Rain Clouds and a Fisherman, ?near Boulogne’ 1845
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 5 Recto:
Rain Clouds and a Fisherman, ?near Boulogne 1845
D35408
Turner Bequest CCCLVIII 6
Gouache, pencil, and watercolour on white wove paper, 230 x 326 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘6’ bottom right
Blind stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCLVIII 6’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Here a simple anecdote of man confronted by the forces of nature is told by the figure of fisherman retreating to dry land as a storm breaks over the sea. For David Blayney Brown, such ‘lonely’ figures contributed to a pervasive sense of melancholy – ‘meditative, withdrawn and silent’ – in the sketches from this tour.1
Three rough circles and a sweep of the pencil indicate the figure’s burden while four or five dabs of ochre stand in for reflections in the wet sand, a tilted head, and a stolid upper body bending under its encumbrance. A turbulent sky and sea is achieved with vigorous, wet-on-wet strokes of grey-blue and purple-brown; small, thick dabs of the latter pigment have been smeared down to the horizon line with a wet brush to create a violent cloud-burst.
Compare the storm clouds on folio 12 recto (D35415; Turner Bequest CCCLVIII 13).
1
Brown 1987, p.12.
Verso:
Blank, except for slight patches of purple watercolour from folio 6 recto opposite (D35409;
Turner Bequest CCCLVIII 7).

John Chu
November 2013

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Rain Clouds and a Fisherman, ?near Boulogne 1845 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-rain-clouds-and-a-fisherman-near-boulogne-r1173509, accessed 24 April 2024.