Joseph Mallord William Turner

This work is one of a group of more than thirty watercolour studies in the Turner Bequest that appear to be preparatory sketches for Campbell’s Poetical Works. They are all painted on cheap, lightweight paper and executed in a rough, loose style. Although it is too vague to be conclusively linked to any of Turner’s finished Campbell illustrations, the suggestion of a stormy sea and the dark blue-black core of this study may link it to The Death-Boat of Heligoland circa 1835 (National Gallery of Scotland).1 There is also some resemblance to another unidentified work (see Tate D27564; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 47).

Technical notes:
Peter Bower has noted that this study is made on off-white low-grade machine-made cartridge paper. The maker is unknown and there is no watermark. This paper would have been relatively cheap to buy and was inferior to standard drawing papers. Turner has used the ‘felt’ side of the sheet which has slightly more texture than the ‘wire’ side, allowing better adhesion of pigment and graphite to the surface of the sheet. Many of Turner’s vignette studies were made on a similar grade of machine-made paper, and the artist employed the ‘felt’ side on all of them.1

Verso:

Inscribed by an unknown hand in pencil ‘CCLXXX 75’ top left, inverted