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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Tour of Yorkshire 1816 > Yorkshire 2 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Heysham Head with Shrimpers in the Foreground 1816

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Heysham Head with Shrimpers in the Foreground’ 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 80 Verso:
Heysham Head with Shrimpers in the Foreground 1816
D11164
Turner Bequest CXLV 80a
Pencil on white wove paper, 96 x 154 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Red Scar’ centre left, ‘Sand’ towards bottom left, and ‘Black Rocks’ below centre
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The present author has identified the cove as St Patrick’s Skeer, the legendary landing place of the Irish saint,1 and dates Turner’s sketches at Heysham to Thursday 8 August 1816.2 The fishermen can be identified as shrimpers from the net lying on the beach besides them. The same ‘Red Scar’ as noted here is also noted in a subsequent sketch taken from a viewpoint further north on the foreshore, on folio 77 verso (D11158).
This sketch, drawn with the page turned horizontally, is upside-down in relation to the main sequence (see the sketchbook’s Introduction).

David Hill
April 2009

1
See Hill 1984, p.87.
2
Ibid., pp.87–90.

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Heysham Head with Shrimpers in the Foreground 1816 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2009, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2023, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-heysham-head-with-shrimpers-in-the-foreground-r1201750, accessed 16 July 2025.