Joseph Mallord William Turner

Figures on a Seashore; Studies of the Sun over the Sea, Perhaps at Margate

c.1829–30

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Marine Dabblers Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 89 × 113 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D22521
Turner Bequest CCXLI 52

Catalogue entry

With the page turned horizontally, Turner has made a series of rapid studies of the sun and figures on a seashore, perhaps at Margate; for others in this sketchbook, see the Introduction. There is a succession of studies of the sun over the sea down the left-hand side and another at the bottom centre. From the scattered inscriptions, this was evidently towards sunset.
Turner also mentions the presence of the ‘Ev Star’, bringing to mind the unfinished, elegiac painting The Evening Star, of about 1830 (Turner Bequest, National Gallery, London),1 a near-empty beach scene. For more on this theme, see the entry for the draft of poetry concerning ‘The first pale Star of Eve ere Twylight comes’ in the Worcester and Shrewsbury sketchbook, in use in or around 1831 (Tate D22279; Turner Bequest CCXXXIX 70).
1
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

Matthew Imms
May 2014

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