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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Farnley Hall and Yorkshire c.1808-24 > Scarborough 1 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Ships c.1816-18

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Ships’ c.1816-18
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 32 Recto:
Ships c.1816–18
D11939
Turner Bequest CL 20
Pencil on white wove paper, 117 x 180 mm
Stamped in black ‘CL 20’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is a very hasty outline of a three-master off shore, with a confused mass of sails and figures in the foreground right. Graham Reynolds has written: ‘Almost purely conceptual, it looks like a child’s scribble, but Turner’s powerful visual memory could build on rapid notes of this kind.’1
1
Reynolds 1969, p.102.
Verso:
Blank
This page followed by a spurious blank leaf, not numbered, inserted as part of some unrecorded restoration

David Hill
September 2008

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Ships c.1816–18 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2008, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-ships-r1146970, accessed 16 April 2024.