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

Identified by Finberg as ‘Scenes on Medway’, the drawings on this page describe delicately handled views of a busy waterway, populated with light, spindly vessels.1 Sheerness is suggested as the location for all of the sketches, an identification based upon the delineation and inscription of a sea wall along the harbour front in a drawing close to the bottom of the sheet, and the configuration of buildings stationed behind it.

The topmost view has been the subject of commentary by Charles Lewis Hind, who remarks upon the inscriptions which mark the tumultuous sky with detailed colour notes, concluding that ‘[no] labour either with pen or pencil was too arduous to hinder [Turner] from noting down his impression of the effects of nature from hour to hour and day to day’.2 Turner juxtaposes dramatic weather conditions against his meticulous, even whimsical inscriptions. For example: ‘Rain with...colour along its edge’. The rumbling clouds and sharp hatches of rain that scar the sky are counterbalanced below by seemingly placid, ‘warm blue’ water, and various vessels with their sails furled before a slice of flat topography.

Below this is a sketch more concerned with the maritime landscape than the topographic one. A tall warship is shown in profile at left, the yards which cross its masts described with brief horizontal marks. Its bowsprit points sharply to the right, where the scene continues. A variety of boats populate the water, all shown in profile and reasonably swift in their handling. Particularly at left, the cluttered forest of vertical masts extends far into the distance, towards the stretch of land evident on the horizon.

Immediately underneath is the drawing which provokes the topographic identification for the folio. Presumably observed from a boat floating close by, the scene shows a substantial harbour, with vessels moored at left and architecture at right. Across the middle portion of the sketch Turner has scored a horizontal line, which is inscribed at right ‘Wall’. Between 1811 and 1812, sea walls had been constructed along the front at Sheerness on foundations of ‘buoyant masses’ according to designs by Sir Samuel Bentham.3 The Dockyard Church at Sheerness is evident at far right, immediately adjacent with the gutter of the sketchbook.

Along the bottom edge of the sheet, towards the left corner, a brief drawing describes buildings positioned on the bend of a river, or road. Towards the opposite corner of the paper, with the page inverted relative to the foliation of the sketchbook, Turner records part of an ambiguous river view which continues across the gutter onto the inside back cover (D40693). The cylindrical building visible on the riverbank here seems also likely to be the subject of closer examination on the facing sheet.

Turner appears to make four additional drawings at Sheerness in this sketchbook, on folios 11 verso, 12 recto, 12 verso, and 86 verso (D17383–D17385, D17499). For an indication of the prevalence of Sheerness within Turner’s oeuvre more generally, refer to the entry for folio 12 verso.