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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Margate, London and Surrey c.1829-45 > Margate Beach Scenes > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Figure and Dog on the Shore, Perhaps with Margate in the Distance c.1829-45

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Figure and Dog on the Shore, Perhaps with Margate in the Distance’ c.1829-45
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
A Figure and Dog on the Shore, Perhaps with Margate in the Distance c.1829–45
D25354
Turner Bequest CCLXIII 232
Watercolour on white wove paper, 191 x 279 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Inscribed in red ink ‘232’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXIII – 232’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Albeit with little or no topographical context, this light-filled beach scene, activated by the slighted of strokes at towards the bottom left to suggest a figure and a dog beside the water, has been suggested as a Margate scene. The blue forms applied wet in wet on the horizon may represent the profile of the town as seen to the east across the bay, as for example in the watercolour Margate, Kent of about 1830 (Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry),1 engraved for the Picturesque Views in England and Wales in 1832 (Tate impressions: T04590–T04592, T06098).
Compare Tate D24946 (Turner Bequest CCLX 110), a slight beach scene inscribed ‘Shrimper and his dog’, evoking the boy and leaping dog on an empty twilit beach in The Evening Star, an unfinished painting of about 1830 (Turner Bequest, National Gallery, London).2
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.398 no.839, reproduced.
2
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.284–5 no.453, pl.454 (colour).
Verso:
Blank; staining at bottom right corresponding with that on the recto; inscribed by ?John Ruskin in pencil ‘AB 218 P O’ bottom right; inscribed in pencil ‘CCLXIII | 232’ bottom right.

Matthew Imms
August 2016

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Figure and Dog on the Shore, Perhaps with Margate in the Distance c.1829–45 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2016, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-figure-and-dog-on-the-shore-perhaps-with-margate-in-the-r1183888, accessed 26 April 2024.