Joseph Mallord William Turner

Fishermen Hauling a Boat, with Shipping beyond Breakers

c.1801–2

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment
Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
On a Lee Shore (2) Sketchbook
Medium
Ink and graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 118 x 182 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D03988
Turner Bequest LXVIII 4

Catalogue entry

As in other drawings on adjacent pages, Turner adopts a striking low viewpoint, so that the more distant craft are almost hidden by the breaking surf in the foreground. This was a procedure he followed in his picture Fishermen upon a Lee-Shore, in Squally Weather, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1802 (Southampton Art Gallery),1 where the scene is witnessed from a beach; and more interestingly in some of the marines of the following years, notably Boats Carrying out Anchors and Cables to Dutch Men of War, in 1665 (Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC)2 of 1804, where the viewer is apparently half submerged in the heaving ocean.
1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.15–16 no.16, pl.12 (colour).
2
Ibid., pp.40–1 no.52, pl.62 (colour).
Verso:
Blank; inscribed by Ruskin in pen and red ink ‘1166’.

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

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