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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Isle of Wight 1827 > Isle of Wight Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Yachts Sailing, ?in the Solent off Cowes 1827

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Yachts Sailing, ?in the Solent off Cowes’ 1827
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 39 Recto:
Yachts Sailing, ?in the Solent off Cowes 1827
D20791
Turner Bequest CCXXVII 37
Pencil and watercolour on white wove paper prepared with a grey wash, 110 x 185 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘37’ top left, upside down
Stamped in black ‘CCXXVII – 37’ top left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The composition is inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation. The view may be south-west from the Solent at the mouth of the river Medina, with Cowes beyond, a common subject in the contemporary Cowes Regatta and Windsor and Cowes, Isle of Wight sketchbooks (Tate; Turner Bequest CCVII, CCXXVI). For other Isle of Wight subjects in the present sketchbook, including watercolours on nearby pages, see under folio 2 recto (D20735).
Technical notes:
This is one of several pages where the monochrome grey wash common to all the rectos has been worked in watercolour with occasional scratching out; see under folio 5 recto (D20741). In this case the there is heavy pencil shading reinforcing the hull of the larger boat and the sail of the smallest, silhouetted against a scratched-out sail beyond.

Matthew Imms
November 2015

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Yachts Sailing, ?in the Solent off Cowes 1827 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-yachts-sailing-in-the-solent-off-cowes-r1182651, accessed 20 April 2024.