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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Spring Tour of Northern France 1845 > Ambleteuse and Wimereux Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Rain Clouds at Sea ?with a Steam Ship 1845

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Rain Clouds at Sea ?with a Steam Ship’ 1845
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Rain Clouds at Sea ?with a Steam Ship 1845
D35401
Turner Bequest CCCLVII 14
Watercolour on white wove paper, 237 x 336 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘14’ bottom right
Blind stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCLVII 14’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The exact subject of this watercolour sketch, featuring blue, grey, brown, and yellow washes, is difficult to discern although breaking rainclouds and a turbulent sea are clearly involved. David Blayney Brown draws a comparison between this and the major oil painting Seascape: Folkestone of about 1845 (private collection)1 and, like Ian Warrell, makes a convincing case that the brown form at the centre of the page is a steamship caught in a rainstorm.2 The grey zigzag directed towards the top right corner may represent the exhaust expelled from the vessel’s chimney. Certainly such a subject would be consistent with the character of the Boulogne coastline during the 1840s as the port became the pre-eminent destination for cross-Channel steam packets.3
As detailed in the Introduction to this sketchbook, this leaf is a possible candidate for one of its ‘drawn on’ inside covers as described by Finberg when the volume had yet to be broken up.4
1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.288–9 no.472, pl.473.
2
Brown 1987, p.12; Warrell 2007, p.195.
3
Georges Oustric, Le Port de Boulogne-sur-Mer au XIXe siècle, La Sentinelle 1995, pp.80–5.
4
Finberg 1909, vol.II, p.1167.
Technical notes:
There is a margin of mottled discolouration to the left of the page.
Verso:
A margin of mottled brown discolouration runs down the extreme right of the page.

John Chu
December 2013

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Rain Clouds at Sea ?with a Steam Ship 1845 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2013, 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-rain-clouds-at-sea-with-a-steam-ship-r1173500, accessed 19 April 2024.