Joseph Mallord William Turner Vessels Firing Salutes 1822
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 64 Recto:
Vessels Firing Salutes 1822
D17618
Turner Bequest CC 64
Turner Bequest CC 64
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 187 mm
Very faint sign of John Ruskin’s red ink inscription ?‘64’ top left inverted
Stamped in black ‘CC 64’ top left inverted
Very faint sign of John Ruskin’s red ink inscription ?‘64’ top left inverted
Stamped in black ‘CC 64’ top left inverted
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.612, CC 64, as ‘Vessels firing salutes.’.
1981
Gerald Finley, Turner and George the Fourth in Edinburgh 1822, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1981, pp.85, [187] reproduced as ‘Vessels firing salutes’.
Finberg called this drawing, made with the sketchbook inverted, ‘Vessels Firing Salutes’, and the puffs of smoke can be seen clearly moving off to the left of the vessels on the top and bottom sketches. This records George IV’s disembarking from the Royal George on 15 August when ‘A few minutes before twelve o’clock, a gun from one of the squadron announced that the king had entered his barge.’ This was followed by cannon salute from the rest of the squadron and cheers from the multitude waiting on the Leith shore.1 The King’s barge may in fact be depicted on the top sketch where there is a line of rowers in a vessel.
This sketch is the first of a series of similarly styled sketches of the royal squadron, all made rather rapidly, but with a confident and solid line utilising shorthand of vertical lines for masts, with perpendicular spars and rows of short parallel horizontal lines representing lines of bunting. This same bunting is prominent in W. Bennett’s engraving after John Christian Schetky of The Royal Squadron in Leith Roads, 1824. The hulls of the boats are largely neglected other than to indicate whether a boat is seen from the front, back or side, or to show features of interest such as the bow of the second vessel from the right on the top sketch.
Thomas Ardill
August 2008
How to cite
Thomas Ardill, ‘Vessels Firing Salutes 1822 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2008, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www