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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Isle of Wight 1827 > Cowes, the River Medina and Shipping > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Cowes and the River Medina from East Cowes, by the New Moon 1827

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Cowes and the River Medina from East Cowes, by the New Moon’ 1827
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Cowes and the River Medina from East Cowes, by the New Moon 1827
D24866
Turner Bequest CCLX 30
Chalk and ink on blue wove paper, 140 x 192 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLX 30’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is among dozens of blue paper studies presumably made in connection with the Cowes Regatta events in the late summer of 1827; see the Introduction to this subsection for other views westwards across the River Medina to Cowes. A crescent moon occurs in the watercolour Cowes, Isle of Wight (private collection),1 engraved in 1830 for the Picturesque Views in England and Wales (Tate impressions: T04556, T06086, T06087), and the moon features in several of the blue paper views in the grounds of East Cowes Castle, covered in a parallel subsection.
Although exhibited in the nineteenth century as an English subject, like several others in the present subsection this drawing was categorised in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory in one of the sections of works on blue paper ‘mostly connected with “French Rivers”’.2
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.395 no.818, reproduced.
2
See Finberg 1909, II, pp.806–13, CCLX, ‘Pencil and ink on blue paper: mostly connected with “French Rivers” series’, c.1830; see also Warrell 1989, p.148 and Warrell 1999, pp.30, 253 note 84, linking this sheet to the Isle of Wight.
Verso:
Blank; inscribed in pencil ‘D24866’ bottom left and ‘cclx[...]’ bottom right, partly obscured. There is white paper or tape adhering around the edges, with scraps of off-white paper attached, dating from the lengthy period when the sheet was mounted and displayed.

Matthew Imms
November 2015

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Cowes and the River Medina from East Cowes, by the New Moon 1827 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-cowes-and-the-river-medina-from-east-cowes-by-the-new-moon-r1183442, accessed 25 July 2025.