J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

This drawing shows a view across a beach with several groups of figures. The scene has been executed with broad areas of wash, with some details outlined in pen and others highlighted with strokes of white gouache. In the centre of the composition, a ribbon-like swirl of white paint captures the reflection of the sunlight on the sand. The style and technique of this motif is reminiscent of another watercolour within this section of the catalogue: the so-called ‘Scarlet Sunset’, a design widely celebrated for its depiction of the effects of light (see Tate D24666; Turner Bequest CCLIX 101).

Turner produced a number of drawings showing figures on the beach in the late 1820s and into the 1830s, demonstrating the artist’s longstanding interest in human activity. Presumed to represent either English or French coastlines associated with the artist’s Continental travels, they are, for the most part, unidentified in terms of specific locations and have been generally categorised as miscellaneous or generic, often on-the-spot, sketches. The majority of these are compiled and described in a separate section of the present catalogue dedicated to the subject (see Matthew Imms’s ‘Figures on a Beach c.1826–45’).

In the case of this picture, a potential connection with an exhibited oil painting explains its separate consideration. In his 1909 Inventory of the Turner Bequest, A.J. Finberg identified the drawing as a preparatory sketch for Calais Sands at Low Water: Poissards Collecting Bait, first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1830, now in the collection at Bury Art Museum.1 Although thematically related – both this sketch and the exhibited canvas show figures on beaches and are devoted to the depiction of sunlight on the sand – there is a discrepancy in terms of their respective compositional arrangement. Furthermore, as has been observed by several Turner scholars, the poses and characterisation of the figures in the present drawing implies activity akin to relaxation rather than work and, additionally, the town seen in the distance on the left bears no marked resemblance to Calais.2 It is presumably for these reasons that the drawing was disregarded as a study for the Calais picture in Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll’s seminal catalogue of Turner’s finished paintings.3

Verso:

Blank, except for inscription in pencil ‘CCLIX – 214’ bottom centre. Stamped in red ‘[crown] BM – P&D CCLIX - 214’ bottom left.