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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > West Country 1811 > Devonshire Coast, No.1 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Figures in or beside a Boat, Perhaps on the Thames near Egham 1811

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Figures in or beside a Boat, Perhaps on the Thames near Egham’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 12 Recto:
Figures in or beside a Boat, Perhaps on the Thames near Egham 1811
D08383
Turner Bequest CXXIII 12
Pencil on white wove writing paper, 75 x 117 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘B[... ?Bar]’ bottom left
Inscribed twice by John Ruskin in red ink ‘12’ bottom right and bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CXXIII – 12’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This drawing has an air of the pastoral studies Turner had made on and around the Thames in about 1805.1 As with adjacent drawings here, such as folio 11 verso opposite and the verso of the present leaf (D08382, D08384), it may have been made at the outset of his West Country journey, when he seems to have crossed the Thames at Egham, mentioned in his accounts on folio 1 recto (D08362) (see the introduction to the tour). There are at least half a dozen figures on the left, apparently in or beyond a shallow boat by the bank of the river.

Matthew Imms
June 2011

1
See David Hill, Turner on the Thames: River Journeys in the Year 1805, New Haven and London 1993.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Figures in or beside a Boat, Perhaps on the Thames near Egham 1811 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2011, 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-or-beside-a-boat-perhaps-on-the-thames-near-egham-r1136860, accessed 19 April 2024.