Joseph Mallord William Turner

Pegwell Bay

c.1830

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Kent Sketchbook
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 76 × 98 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D35806
Turner Bequest CCCLXIII 27

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These watercolours share a common palette of grey, black, blue and olive-green backgrounds interspersed with fluid bands of pink, yellow or blue. Turner may have painted the sheets one after the other, using the same few colours ready mixed on his palette.

Working in this way freed Turner from the conventions of watercolour painting and enabled him to experiment with new methods. In On the Sea Shore he seems to have created dots of colour by flicking a brush loaded with paint against the paper.

Gallery label, April 2005

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Catalogue entry

This page appears to comprise a two-part panorama taking in the whole width of Pegwell Bay, at the mouth of the River Stour on the eastern coast of Kent, between Ramsgate to the north-east and Sandwich, just inland to the south. There is another view across the bay, towards St Lawrence near Ramsgate, on folio 6 verso (D35768). For Ramsgate, see under folio 6 verso (D35768), and for various views of Sandwich, see under folio 6 recto (D35767).

Owing to an apparent typographical error, Finberg’s 1909 Inventory gives no separately numbered entry for the verso (D35807; Turner Bequest CCCLXIII 27v), while the entry for the present page reads ‘“Pegwell Bay.”’, followed on the next line by ‘View of Sandwich. – “Cuyp”; also sketch of clouds and figures on board a packet’,1 which evidently applies to the verso.

Matthew Imms
September 2016

Finberg 1909, II, p.1178.

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