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

There are three separate sketches here, with a group of yachts sailing at the top; among them is a vessel with a tall smokestack, which appears to be a steam-sail hybrid. There is another grouping of yachts approaching under full sail at the centre right. Towards the bottom left is a study of boats off a coastline, which seems to be the eastern end of Dorset’s Isle of Purbeck, with Durlston Head, Peveril Point and Ballard Down beyond Swanage Bay from the south. Compare the similar coastal profile on folio 32 recto (D20647; Turner Bequest CCXXVI 31), inscribed ‘Swang Bay’, under which the subject is discussed further.

This suggests an excursion by sea of roughly thirty-five miles south-west down the Solent and out into the open Channel from Turner’s temporary base at East Cowes on the Isle of Wight. For more on studies in this sketchbook relating to the regatta events at Cowes from late July 1827 onwards, see the Introduction.