Bathed in a radiant pale yellow light, Turner depicts the harbour of Scarborough, Yorkshire on the North Sea coast on a quiet morning. Indeed the sense of stillness evoked in this view is probably due to the fact that out of the six
Ports designs originally published this is the only view ‘taken from the safety of the shoreline’.
1 In the foreground a cutter is drawn up on the foreshore, its wares being unloaded into horse-drawn carts in the surf. A shrimper forages in the sands, tilting her head towards her a spotted dog looking at her eagerly. A small and pale coral coloured starfish can be seen between them; starfish becoming a curious feature of all of Turner’s Scarborough views made after 1809. The creature was probably a symbolic for Turner of a particular memory of a visit to the Scarborough beaches.
2 Washerwomen are dotted at the water’s edge. Following the curve of the cove around is a number of moored vessels marking out the harbour: the focus of Scarborough’s thriving fishing industry. Beyond, atop the precipitous rocky promontory and rendered in faint wash, is St Mary’s Church and then Scarborough Castle, built by Henry II in the twelfth century.
3 The fortress, which was battered by the Roundheads’ cannon in the English Civil War, lends the scene a sense of historical and picturesque grandeur, a sense accentuated by the stature of the headland. The art historians Lindsay Stainton and Richard S. Schneiderman write that it was a characteristic of Turner to depart ‘from strict topographical fact’ and to attenuate ‘the length of the headland to create the effect of a sheer cliff’.
4 This is certainly apparent in the present watercolour.
