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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Thames, London and South of England 1821 ... > Thames Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Studies of Sailing Boats and Groups of Figures c.1825

Image 1 of 2
  • Inside back cover of sketchbook
  • Enhanced image
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Studies of Sailing Boats and Groups of Figures’ c.1825 (Inside back cover of sketchbook)
Inside back cover of sketchbook
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Inside Back Cover:
Studies of Sailing Boats and Groups of Figures c.1825
D40973
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 188 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?Thin ... and ... Cloth]’ top left, ‘[?D... v C...k]’ towards top centre, ‘[Boy & Girls ... | Going ... with | a stone ...]’ and ‘Boy and [?Pig]’ centre right, and ‘Boy and dog’ and ‘Man [...] on the Blue K’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
In August 1825 Turner was abroad in the Low Countries, and it is possible that the scattered figure studies and sailing boats here, inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation and characterised by Finberg as ‘bathers, groups on the sands, &c.’,1 may relate to that visit, although drawings on nearby pages show the familiar scene from the top of Richmond Hill (see the Introduction). Compare the note on folio 82 recto (D18692), apparently reading ‘Girls play with stones’, with the activities of the ‘Boy and Girls’ here.
1
Finberg 1909, II, p.646.
Technical notes:
The page has rather darkened in general, but conspicuously where it is pasted over the overlap of the pencil holder integral with the back cover.

Matthew Imms
December 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Studies of Sailing Boats and Groups of Figures c.1825 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-studies-of-sailing-boats-and-groups-of-figures-r1172825, accessed 19 April 2024.