Sailing Barges, Guardship and a Rowing Boat: ?Related to ‘Purfleet and the Essex Shore as Seen from Long Reach’

c.1805–8

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: River and Margate Sketchbook
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 115 x 190 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D06399
Turner Bequest XCIX 25

Catalogue entry

Finberg’s note adds ‘Possibly related to Mr. J.G. Gould’s “The Nore”’, thus referring to Purfleet and the Essex Shore as Seen from Long Reach (private collection),1 bought by the Earl of Essex from Turner’s Gallery in 1808. The connection seems proven in respect of the positions of the naval guardship in the left distance, the rowing boat in the left foreground and the barge on the right, but in the picture Turner omitted the two other sailing barges in the centre of this sketch.

David Blayney Brown
March 2009

Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.57 no.74 (pl.84).

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