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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

On a Lee Shore (2) sketchbook c.1801–2

Turner Bequest LXVIII 1–8
Sketchbook without surviving original wrappers, bound in recent brown paper covers with a front flyleaf
8 leaves of white wove paper prepared with a blue-grey wash; page size 118 x 182 mm
Probably made by Turner (see main catalogue entry)
Inscribed by Turner in brown ink ‘103’ on a vellum label glued to the verso of folio 8 (D03993)
Numbered 170 as part of the Turner Schedule in 1854, and endorsed by the Executors of the Turner Bequest on the verso of folio 1 (D03985)
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg dated this and the On a Lee Shore (1) sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest LXVII) to 1800–2, but it is clear that all the drawings on their total of sixteen leaves were executed at much the same time, which was in all probability the moment when Turner was contemplating ideas for the painting that became Fishermen upon a Lee-Shore, in Squally Weather, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1802 (Southampton Art Gallery).1 Several studies for that picture, annotated by Turner ‘Lee Shore’, are in the much larger Calais Pier sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest LXXXI). It is most likely that these two improvised books were used on a single occasion when Turner was able to study the sea in rough conditions, perhaps at Margate.
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll do not associate the exhibited picture directly with any of these sketches,2 but their general similarity of theme, noted by Luke Herrmann,3 and Ann Chumbley and Ian Warrell,4 and implicit in Finberg’s name for the book, argues strongly for a link. The principal difference between the two sketchbooks is that whereas the other contains rapid outline sketches in ink with some pencil underdrawing, this one has more substantial, worked up images, making use of wash and scraping-out.
1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.15–16 no.16, pl.12 (colour).
2
See ibid., p.15.
3
See Herrmann 1981, p.6.
4
See Chumbley and Warrell 1989, p.57 under no.68.

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

Revised by Matthew Imms
April 2015

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How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘On a Lee Shore (2) sketchbook c.1801–2’, sketchbook, May 2013, revised by Matthew Imms, April 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/on-a-lee-shore-2-sketchbook-r1178289, accessed 29 March 2024.