Sailing Boats on the Shore, with the Sea Beyond

c.1799–1802

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Studies for Pictures Sketchbook
Medium: Ink and graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 135 x 210 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D04122
Turner Bequest LXIX 106 v

Catalogue entry

Made with the page turned horizontally, this is a slight and unfinished sketch, so that the subject is difficult to read; it seems to involve a group of small boats in an impending collision, as in the painting Dutch Boats in a Gale: Fishermen Endeavouring to Put their Fish on Board (‘The Bridgewater Seapiece’) of 1801 (private collection, on long loan to the National Gallery, London).1 It is not noted in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory.2

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.12–13 no.14, pl.11 (colour).

See A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.173.

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