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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > History Painting c.1799-1807 > Studies for Pictures Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Sailing Boats on the Shore, with the Sea Beyond c.1799-1802

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Sailing Boats on the Shore, with the Sea Beyond’ c.1799-1802
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 105 Verso:
Sailing Boats on the Shore, with the Sea Beyond c.1799–1802
D04122
Turner Bequest LXIX 106v
Pencil and white chalk on blue laid paper, 135 x 210 mm
Inscribed in pencil ‘LXIX f 106 | 763’ top left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Made with the page turned horizontally, this is a slight and unfinished sketch, so that the subject is difficult to read; it seems to involve a group of small boats in an impending collision, as in the painting Dutch Boats in a Gale: Fishermen Endeavouring to Put their Fish on Board (‘The Bridgewater Seapiece’) of 1801 (private collection, on long loan to the National Gallery, London).1 It is not noted in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory.2

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.12–13 no.14, pl.11 (colour).
2
See A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.173.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Sailing Boats on the Shore, with the Sea Beyond c.1799–1802 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-sailing-boats-on-the-shore-with-the-sea-beyond-r1178001, accessed 21 September 2024.