Joseph Mallord William Turner

This is a more developed and extended version of the composition of a classical sea-port on folio 19 verso of the sketchbook (D05517); compare also folio 31 verso (D05536). With the sketch facing it on folio 31 (D05535), depicting idealised Thames scenery, it forms a contrast or comparison that is singled out by Nicholson as typical of this sketchook’s ‘cogent interrogation of structures of meaning’ which led Turner to ‘put mythic themes and classical compositions in close rapport with drawings of observable scenery ... perceiving the ways such opposite approaches might be mutually reinforcing’.