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

Made with the sketchbook inverted according to its foliation, the drawing on this page describes a simplistic but confidently negotiated man of war. Craig Hartley, subsequently supported by a number of scholars, suggests that the present page supplied the basic design for the man of war on the left hand side of the watercolour Castle Upnor, Kent painted in around 1831–2 (Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester)1 and engraved in 1833 for the England and Wales series (Tate impression: T06102).2

Hartley notes Ruskin’s observation that, in the watercolour, Turner neglected to show the top masts of the ship. Ruskin interpreted this exclusion of upper spars as a way to increase the massive appearance of the hull, but Hartley points out that this is in fact consistent with the present sketch, and that warships ‘in ordinary such as this would have frequently been serviced at the Naval Dockyard at Chatham’.3 Ann Sumner supports and elaborates on Hartley’s argument, suggesting that Turner ‘probably intended the viewer to look pessimistically upon the decline of military might’.4

Several other sketches in this book are associated with the same watercolour. For information about this group of drawings, and the history of Castle Upnor, see the entry for folio 87 verso (D17501).