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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Meuse-Mosel, Luxembourg and Northern ... > Rivers Meuse and Moselle Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Three Figures of Sailors ?at Calais 1824

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Three Figures of Sailors ?at Calais’ 1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 196 Recto:
Three Figures of Sailors ?at Calais 1824
D19928
Turner Bequest CCXVI 189
Pencil on white wove paper, 118 x 78 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘3 A [...] | [...]’ bottom right ascending
Inscribed in blue ink by Ruskin ‘189’ top right (partially torn off)
Stamped in black ‘CCXVI–189’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Here Turner has rendered three swift studies of sailors, the men likely encountered by the artist while he was at Calais harbour on 9 or 14 September (see Tate D20083, D19922–D19926; Turner Bequest CCXVI 272, 186–188a). There is an almost illegible note inscribed by Turner close to the figures reading: ‘3 A [...] | [...]’. The sketches were produced with the book turned upside down.

Alice Rylance-Watson
June 2014

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Three Figures of Sailors ?at Calais 1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 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-three-figures-of-sailors-at-calais-r1174724, accessed 25 April 2024.