Joseph Mallord William Turner

Scenes on the Sands at Yarmouth

c.1824

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Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex Sketchbook
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 115 × 118 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D18207
Turner Bequest CCIX 26 a

Catalogue entry

Here Turner pictures Yarmouth on the Norfolk coast in three successive views. He records groups of locals walking on the sands while fishermen attend to their boats and catch on the shore. The old pier is depicted in the distance in each view (see also Tate D25110; Turner Bequest CCLXII 10).

Butlin and Joll have suggested that these drawings and those on Tate D18209–D18211; Turner Bequest CCIX 27a–28a may be connected to a later oil painting exhibited in 1831: Life Boat and Manby Apparatus going off to a Stranded Vessel making Signal (Blue Lights) of Distress (Victoria and Albert Museum, London).1 They equally could be associated with Yarmouth Sands (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), an unpublished watercolour design produced for the East Coast scheme or Great Yarmouth, Norfolk produced for England and Wales project (Tate impression T04547).2

Alice Rylance-Watson
January 2015

Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.189 no.336.

Wilton 1979, p.394 no.810 and 405 no.904.

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