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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Margate, London and Surrey c.1829-45 > Marine Dabblers Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Margate with a Ship Wrecked or Aground c.1829-30

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Margate with a Ship Wrecked or Aground’ c.1829-30
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 78 Recto:
Margate with a Ship Wrecked or Aground c.1829–30
D22552
Turner Bequest CCXLI 78
Pencil on gilt-edged blue wove paper, 113 x 89 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘78’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCXLI – 78’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The distant buildings on the headland at the top of this slight sketch appears to be Margate seen from the west, dominated by the tower of the recent Holy Trinity Church, with windmills to its right; compare the distance of the watercolour Margate, Kent of about 1830 (Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry),1 engraved in 1832 for the Picturesque Views in England and Wales (Tate impressions: T04590–T04592, T06098); see also folio 75 recto (D22548). The church was consecrated in 1829 and bombed in 1943; the tower was demolished in 1958.2
In the foreground is a beached or wrecked two-master ship, perhaps echoing the ship in the foreground of the earlier watercolour Margate of about 1825 (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford),3 engraved in 1828 for the Ports of England, but not published until the 1856 Harbours of England. For other Margate subjects, see the Introduction.
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.398 no.839, reproduced.
2
See ‘Margate, Holy Trinity Old Church’, Church Bells of Kent, accessed 14 May 2014, http://kent.lovesguide.com/margate_holy_trinity_old.htm.
3
Ibid., pp.387–8 no.757, reproduced.
Verso:
Blank

Matthew Imms
May 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Margate with a Ship Wrecked or Aground c.1829–30 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2014, 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-margate-with-a-ship-wrecked-or-aground-r1148444, accessed 25 April 2024.