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

With the sketchbook turned upside down, here Turner has drawn two views of a quay surrounded by separate sketches of objects and figures operating navigating carts and barrows. The location is Yarmouth, a port on the Norfolk coast celebrated for its naval heritage and fisheries.1 At the top register and at rear the artist has jotted objects like fishing baskets and creels piled onto wooden handcarts, as well as a ‘Sand Cart’ and a ‘Brewer’s Dray’ used for transporting barrels of beer and ale. Similar quayside drawings are depicted on Tate D18194–D18196, D18203–D18204; Turner Bequest CCIX 20–21, 24a–25. Turner’s sketches of Yarmouth are associated with designs for both the England and Wales (Tate impression T04547) and East Coast engraving schemes, though the latter design, housed at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, was unpublished.2