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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Ports of England c.1822-8 > 'Ports of England' Studies > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Boats off a Jetty; Colour Study c.1822-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Boats off a Jetty; Colour Study’ c.1822-8
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Boats off a Jetty; Colour Study c.1822–8
D25390
Turner Bequest CCLXIII 267
Watercolour on white wove paper, 184 x 293 mm
Watermarked ‘J whatman | turkey mill| 1825’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘267’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXIII 267’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner scholar Eric Shanes writes that this colour sketch may depict boats off a jetty at Bridport, Dorset.1 Turner had produced a view of Bridport for the Southern Coast of England series in 1813–7, which was engraved and published in 1820 (Tate impressions T04398–T04399, T05367–T05368, T05982). Shanes suggests that the present sketch may be a preparatory work for a potential Ports of England subject, though no finished view ever came to fruition.2 As a coastal town with a once thriving fishing port and rope-making industry and situated at the confluence of the River Brit and its tributaries, Bridport would have been an apposite subject for the series.
The loose rendering of form in the sketch makes it rather difficult to decipher definitive features of the landscape. A jetty or breakwater is visible, marked out in grey and stone coloured wash. The vertical peak of a sail rises up behind it. Figures have been roughly suggested in wash to the right of the jetty, one highlighted with a daub of vivid blue wash. The sky is rendered in an almost variegated manner, with dark blue-grey at the left and bare paper faintly highlighted with streaks of blue and yellow.
This view may be associated with another ‘colour-beginning’ of the same location dated around 1828 (Tate D25189; Turner Bequest CCLXIII 267).

Alice Rylance-Watson
March 2013

1
Shanes 1997, pp.95 Appendix I ‘Dorset’, 100 Appendix I ‘Ports of England Series’, 102 Appendix I ‘Southern Coast of England Series’; a reproduction of the Southern Coast view can be found in Eric Shanes, Turner’s England 1810–38, London 1990, p.57, no.33 (colour).
2
Ibid.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Boats off a Jetty; Colour Study c.1822–8 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2013, 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-boats-off-a-jetty-colour-study-r1148231, accessed 16 April 2024.