Joseph Mallord William Turner

The pencil additions and suggestions in the foreground, apparently by another hand (the shore, quay and figures), seem to anticipate the composition of the 1807 painting Sun Rising through Vapour; Fishermen Cleaning and Selling Fish (National Gallery, London).1 They transform the horizontal composition by the introduction of a dock or jetty at the right, a device that Turner adopted for that painting and for his two watercolour views of Scarborough, of 1809 (Wallace Collection, London)2 and 1811 (Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide).3.

The writing may perhaps be Turner’s, but the additions to the drawing in pencil do not look at all like his hand, especially the odd stunted tree-forms that apparently stand for human figures. There seems to be no reason why Turner, if he added these alterations himself, should not have made them in ink. For another intervention in a different hand see the 1801 Helmsley sketchbook (Tate D02466; Turner Bequest LIII 3a).

Verso:

Blank; inscribed in pencil in the same hand as that on the verso of folio 114 (D04132; Turner Bequest LXIX 115) ‘142’ and by John Ruskin in red ink ‘1068’.