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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Scotland 1818-20 > Bass Rock and Edinburgh Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Figures in Boats 1818

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Figures in Boats’ 1818
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 25 Verso:
Figures in Boats 1818
D13368
Turner Bequest CLXV 25a
Pencil on white laid paper, 99 x 159 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner presumably sketched these two boats and crews at Dunbar harbour which he drew several times on previous pages of this sketchbook (folios 24–25; D13365–D13367; CLXV 24–25), one of which also includes a small boat (folio 24; D13365; CLXV 24). Turner himself had hired a boat to take him along the coast near Dunbar to sketch the Bass Rock, and small boats feature in three of his Provincial Antiquities illustrations (Bass Rock, circa 1823, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight; Dunbar circa 1823, private collection; and Tantallon Castle, 1821, Manchester City Art Galleries).1 Turner made several other studies of boats on this trip (see Tour of Scotland 1818 Tour Introduction).

Thomas Ardill
October 2007

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.426 no.1069, 1066 and 1067.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Figures in Boats 1818 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 2007, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-figures-in-boats-r1131910, accessed 24 April 2024.