Joseph Mallord William Turner

Provenance:
...
?Lady Ashburton by 1878
...
Henry Vaughan after 1878

Engraved:
(see main catalogue entry)

Turner’s composition, traditionally assumed to be an unexecuted design for the Liber Studiorum, is closely based on his oil painting The Victory Returning from Trafalgar (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven)1 possibly exhibited at his gallery in 1806 along with The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory (Tate N00480) to commemorate Admiral Lord Nelson’s simultaneous triumph and death in the battle against the combined French and Spanish fleets on 21 October 1805. The Victory Returning was bought by Walter Fawkes, possibly in 1806. There are differences in the sails of the boats in the foreground, but the most noticeable change is that the ship seen on the left of the painting from the port side, in grey silhouette with the wind against her, has been replaced by one following the central vessel towards the viewer – and comparable to the nearest in the Liber design known as Ships in a Breeze (see Tate D08114; Turner Bequest CXVI M).

In an established tradition of ships’ portraits,2 all three ships are one, and are generally thought to represent Nelson’s flagship, as indicated by the painting’s traditional title – The Victory Returning from Trafalgar, in Three Positions – although not particularly accurately in terms of her basic configuration, nor showing the battle damage she had suffered. In both the painting and the drawing, she is apparently shown south-west of the Isle of Wight, off the Needles, with the central ship of the three shown effectively sailing in the wrong direction, heading south. In fact, she had put into Spithead (off Portsmouth to the north-east of the island) for repairs to her masts in December 1805 before continuing up the Channel and on to Sheerness, where Turner drew her on or soon after her arrival in the Shipwreck (1) and Nelson sketchbooks (Tate; Turner Bequest LXXXVII, LXXXIX). Accounts differ, but it seems that at least two of the masts had been severely damaged.3 Given Turner’s careful research on board for his painting of the battle, these discrepancies from what might have been expected in a ‘documentary’ account of the Victory’s return (including the failure to show flags at half-mast) have led Eric Shanes to suggest that the painting may have pre-dated Trafalgar and may not even have originally been intended as a specific representation of the Victory.4