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 > Calais Pier Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Study for 'Dutch Boats in a Gale: Fishermen Endeavouring to Put their Fish on Board ("The Bridgewater Seapiece")' c.1799-1801

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Study for 'Dutch Boats in a Gale: Fishermen Endeavouring to Put their Fish on Board ("The Bridgewater Seapiece")'’ c.1799-1801
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 60 Verso:
Study for ‘Dutch Boats in a Gale: Fishermen Endeavouring to Put their Fish on Board (“The Bridgewater Seapiece”)’ c.1799–1801

D05020
Turner Bequest LXXXI 118
Ink wash and white chalk on blue laid paper, 436 x 271 mm
Inscribed by Turner in ink ‘Dukes’ [sic] Picture’ towards top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘LXXXI–118’ top right, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, the subject is continued on folio 61 recto opposite (D05021; Turner Bequest LXXXI 119). It shows only a portion of the shipping in the picture painted for the Duke of Bridgewater, Dutch Boats in a Gale: Fishermen Endeavouring to Put their Fish on Board (‘The Bridgewater Seapiece’), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1801 (private collection, on loan to the National Gallery, London):1 the vessels in the far distance and the sunlit coast beyond them, all modified in the finished work.
Finberg considered this drawing ‘so bald and empty and so unlike the final result that one would not connect the study with picture did it not bear Turner’s inscription’.2 For related studies in this sketchbook, see under folio 54 verso (D05008; Turner Bequest LXXXI 106).

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

1
Butlin and Joll 1984, pp.12–13 no.14, pl.11 (colour).
2
Finberg 1910, p.45.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Study for ‘Dutch Boats in a Gale: Fishermen Endeavouring to Put their Fish on Board (“The Bridgewater Seapiece”)’ c.1799–1801 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-study-for-dutch-boats-in-a-gale-fishermen-endeavouring-to-r1178224, accessed 20 September 2024.