Joseph Mallord William Turner

Shipping off East Cowes

1827

Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)

License this image

In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Cowes Regatta Sketchbook
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 74 × 100 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D18003
Turner Bequest CCVII 7 a

Catalogue entry

The profile of a headland and woods at the top, combined with the two busy studies of shipping inverted relative to it below, including the hatched, silhouetted hull of a large, moored warship, appear to have informed the contre-jour painting Shipping off East Cowes Headland, of 1827 (Tate N01999),1 showing the mouth of the Medina Estuary looking east from the shore at Cowes into the low morning sun.

Turner has made visual and written notes of clouds, colour and tone in the drawing, which correspond with the effects in the painting. Compare the slight sketch of a headland on folio 19 verso (D18025). For more on studies in this sketchbook relating to the regatta events at Cowes from late July 1827 onwards, see the sketchbook Introduction.

Matthew Imms
December 2014

Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.161 no.267 pl.272 (colour).

Read full Catalogue entry