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 > Cowes Regatta Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Shipping off East Cowes 1827

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Shipping off East Cowes’ 1827
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 7 Verso:
Shipping off East Cowes 1827
D18003
Turner Bequest CCVII 7a
Pencil on white wove paper, 74 x 100 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Light’ towards top left, ‘yell’ top centre, ‘Dark’ towards top right, and ‘warm [?Light] yell’ above centre
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The profile of a headland and woods at the top, combined with the two busy studies of shipping inverted relative to it below, including the hatched, silhouetted hull of a large, moored warship, appear to have informed the contre-jour painting Shipping off East Cowes Headland, of 1827 (Tate N01999),1 showing the mouth of the Medina Estuary looking east from the shore at Cowes into the low morning sun.
Turner has made visual and written notes of clouds, colour and tone in the drawing, which correspond with the effects in the painting. Compare the slight sketch of a headland on folio 19 verso (D18025). For more on studies in this sketchbook relating to the regatta events at Cowes from late July 1827 onwards, see the sketchbook Introduction.

Matthew Imms
December 2014

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.161 no.267 pl.272 (colour).

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Shipping off East Cowes 1827 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2014, 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-shipping-off-east-cowes-r1183491, accessed 24 April 2024.