Eric Shanes has suggested that this colour study represents the harbour at Whitby, North Yorkshire, as an undeveloped subject for Turner’s
Picturesque Views in England and Wales.
1 He has compared it with the watercolour
Whitby of about 1827 (private collection),
2 engraved (open etching only; no Tate impression) for the
Picturesque Views on the East Coast of England, which shows St Mary’s Church and Whitby Abbey from an elevated viewpoint looking north-east, with a
contre-jour dawn effect which would only be feasible from that angle in high summer; the same applies with the sun at the centre of the present composition, assuming the identification is correct. Shanes describes the present work as ‘possibly based on a synthesis’ of pencil sketches in the 1801
Helmsley sketchbook (Tate
D02469–D02471; Turner Bequest LIII 6, 7, 8),
3 dominated by the tower (now gone) of Whitby Abbey at the centre and the lower profile of St Mary’s to its left, looking north-east across the harbour from the waterline.