Joseph Mallord William Turner

This is among dozens of blue paper studies presumably made in connection with the Cowes Regatta events in the late summer of 1827; see the Introduction to this subsection. Like the equally slight Tate D20384 (Turner Bequest CCXXIV 88), it possibly features East Cowes Castle on the skyline, looking east from the River Medina, or the tower of St Mary’s Church, Cowes, looking west.

The present sheet is among a handful now identified as Isle of Wight-related subjects which had been categorised in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory in a large section of blue paper ‘Meuse-Moselle’ subjects of about 1826,1 albeit some of which ‘may belong to the “Rivers of France” series, or even to the Italian tour of 1828’;2 it was among many ‘done up in four parcels’ variously labelled by John Ruskin as ‘Scrawls’ and ‘Rubbish’.3

Verso:

Blank; inscribed in pencil ‘52 | O’ bottom right, signifying that the sheet was once in one of Ruskin’s four numbered parcels noted above, in this case of ‘Chalk on grey. Scrawls’.1