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

This is one of a sequence of twenty-five recto pages of watercolour landscape, sea and sky compositions between folio 9 recto (D18609) and folio 34 recto (D18638), many of which evoke quiet Thames Valley scenes with water in the foreground; for a checklist and general comments, see the sketchbook’s Introduction. While various others are probably improvisations, here the figures on the foreshore (including a woman or girl in a bonnet and perhaps a silhouetted man leaning against a post) and on a punt in the water are slight but characterful. They have at least an air of observed reality, with the slightest indication of a bridge and buildings beyond, perhaps as a recollection of the pale atmosphere of a misty morning at Richmond.