The Turner Bequest includes more than four hundred sketches which have been catalogued as 'Colour Beginnings' (i.e TB CCLXIII). While some of these works have been identified as preparatory ideas, or 'beginnings', for other pictures, many are actually studies of the sky, such as this memorandum of a group of rolling cumulus. Turner is unlikely to have painted these out of doors, and most probably produced them in batches in his studio, using them as a means of testing his skills in watercolour.
Gallery label, August 2004
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