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 A Sailing Ship c.1829-30

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Sailing Ship’ c.1829-30 (Inside back cover of sketchbook)
Inside back cover of sketchbook
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Inside Back Cover:
A Sailing Ship c.1829–30
D41106
Pencil on gilt-edged mauve wove paper, 89 x 113 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page inverted relative to the foliation, half the page is taken up with the following pencil notes:
     28         Earle __ of Hull
of Geo III p. 1806
                         oct 6 1806
[?Turner] Cliffords Inn –
            a [?Italian]
‘28 of Geo III’ is legal phraseology to indicate a law enacted in the twenty-eighth year of the reign of George III (1760–1820). Clifford’s Inn was an inn of chancery (a society of solicitors and attorneys) in London’s legal district; it was sold off in 1903 and demolished in 1934 except for a small gatehouse which survives down Clifford’s Inn Passage, running north off Fleet Street just west of St Dunstan-in-the-West’s Church and Fetter Lane.1 The significance of the information remains to be established.
Drawn with the page turned horizontally, a large sailing ship is shown, apparently with a small sailing boat behind or beyond it. These may have been observed off Margate or in the Pool of London (see the Introduction).
1
See Clare Rider, ‘Lost in the Past : The Rediscovered Archives of Clifford’s Inn’, The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, accessed 27 February 2014, http://www.innertemple.org.uk/history/historical-articles/29-cliffords-inn.
Technical notes:
The page is somewhat stained by the leather overlaps from the back cover and the acidic board over which it is pasted.

Matthew Imms
May 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Sailing Ship 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-a-sailing-ship-r1148449, accessed 20 September 2024.