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

This faint sketch appears to show boats on a river, possibly in a port or harbour. Masts are visible across the skyline and two sailing boats are clearly depicted in the central part of the composition. In the foreground, the faint outline of a small vessel is discernible. The bridge or fortress-type structure that occupies the central portion of the scene, together with the distinctive rooftop features of the buildings on the left-hand side, perhaps offer the biggest clue as to its location, though it remains, at present, unidentified.

In his 1909 Inventory of the Turner Bequest, A.J. Finberg included the drawing in a sub-group of ‘black and white sketches on blue connected with the Meuse-Moselle tour’,1 which he described as ‘a bundle of black and white sketches, all on sheets of blue paper of the same size ... among them may be sketches not of the Meuse-Moselle Tour.’2 Finberg also noted Ruskin’s dismissal of their significance, describing how the group of drawings were ‘done up in four parcels’ and labelled with endorsements such as ‘scrawls’ or ‘rubbish’.3 In the Introduction to his ‘European River and Lowland Scenes c.1824–39’ section of this catalogue, Ben Pollitt has observed that while many of the drawings within this subsection offer only quite brief or faint outlines of their subject, closer examination is often repaid with ‘useful, sometimes fascinating, insights into Turner’s practice, certainly such as to challenge Ruskin’s disparaging assessment of them’.

Verso:

Blank, except for inscriptions, in pencil ’56 | O’ bottom right, and ‘127’ top left, ascending vertically.