Shipping in Rough Waters

c.1834

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: The Fire at Sea Sketchbook
Medium: Watercolour on paper
Dimensions: Support: 139 x 228 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D27795
Turner Bequest CCLXXXII 4

Catalogue entry

This colour sketch of shipping caught in rough waters is one of several in this volume. For more information, see the sketchbook introduction.

Technical notes:

Art historian A.J. Finberg’s 1909 inventory of the Turner Bequest notes that this piece was removed for exhibition at the National Gallery in the nineteenth century with the number ‘161b’ and subsequently reincorporated into the sketchbook in its original position.1 Darker margins around the edge of the leaf indicate prolonged exposure to light.

A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.908. Unusually, the work is not recorded in John Ruskin’s list of these exhibits; see E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn eds., Library Edition: The Works of John Ruskin: Volume XIII: Turner: The Harbours of England; Catalogues and Notes, London 1904, p.637.

Verso:

Inscribed in black ink with the note ‘cclxxxii.4’

John Chu
March 2015

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