Joseph Mallord William Turner

Study for ‘The Shipwreck’

c.1805

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Shipwreck (1) Sketchbook
Medium
Dimensions: Support: 118 × 185 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D05391
Turner Bequest LXXXVII 16

Catalogue entry

Drawn with the sketchbook inverted. In Sketches and Drawings Finberg assigns this sketch to the Shipwreck (2) sketchbook (Tate D05428–D05445; D40697–D40700; Turner Bequest LXXXVIII) and appears to describe it twice, both as ‘page 16’ and as ‘Another of the sketches’ that he reproduces as pl.XXI. Unique in this book in being tinted with blue rather than brown or grey washes, and as Finberg observes ‘a little more fully realised than some of the others’, this lively sketch is for the stricken ship in the right background of Turner’s picture The Shipwreck (Tate N00476).1 See Introduction to the sketchbook for the picture. The fishing boat on the right of the picture is also anticipated here, but with a smaller sail.

David Blayney Brown
January 2006

Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.43 no.54 (pl. 64).

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