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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Thames, London and South of England 1821 ... > Thames Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Steamboat, and Figures beside a Punt c.1825

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Steamboat, and Figures beside a Punt’ c.1825
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 31 Recto:
A Steamboat, and Figures beside a Punt c.1825
D18635
Turner Bequest CCXII 31
Watercolour on white wove paper, 114 x 188 mm
Part watermark ‘lee | 19’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘31’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXII – 31’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
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. Here there is no topographical setting, with the focus on two figures on the right beside a punt by on a quay or foreshore. In deeper water beyond is a substantial vessel in profile with a single mast or narrow smoke-stack beside perfunctory rounded shapes, suggesting the housing of a paddle wheel and indicating that the craft is steam powered.
With the present page among his examples, Ian Warrell has noted that within a few years Turner had pictured such craft ‘on the Thames, in the Solent, in the Channel and off Scotland’.1 They are seen off the Tower of London in the contemporary River sketchbook (Tate D17820, D17823; Turner Bequest CCIV 34a, 36).
1
Warrell 1999, p.77, and see p.258 note 79 for others.
Verso:
Blank

Matthew Imms
December 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Steamboat, and Figures beside a Punt c.1825 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-steamboat-and-figures-beside-a-punt-r1172753, accessed 20 September 2024.