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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > East Anglia, Sussex and Yorkshire 1824 > Brighton and Arundel Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Columbus Moored at Blackwall c.1824

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Columbus Moored at Blackwall’ c.1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 55 Recto:
The Columbus Moored at Blackwall c.1824
D18392
Turner Bequest CCX 49
Pencil on white wove paper, 75 x 118 mm
Watermarked ‘Smith & [Allnutt] | 18[22]’
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Clumbus | Whale Smack’ centre
Inscribed in blue ink by Ruskin ‘49’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CCX–49’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Here Turner has produced a study of the four-masted barque The Columbus, which arrived off the south coast of England at the end of October 1824.1 She launched from the Isle of Orleans, Quebec, in July of that year, laden with over six thousand tons of timber bound for London. Having sprung a leak earlier in her voyage, she was hauled with the help of a fleet of pilots and steam tugs to Blackwall Reach in the East End of London. Turner pictures her moored at Blackwall in the present drawing, inscribing the note ‘Clumbus | Whale Smack’ close by. The Columbus is depicted elsewhere in this sketchbook on Tate D18406–D18407; Turner Bequest CCX 57–57a.
1
See catalogue entry for ‘The Columbus Captn Wm McKellar. As She Appears opposite the Folley House, Blackwall Reach’, Royal Museums Greenwich, accessed 24 February 2015, http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/102536.html and Ian Warrell, Turner’s Sketchbooks, London 2014, p.128.
Verso:
Blank.

Alice Rylance-Watson
February 2015

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘The Columbus Moored at Blackwall c.1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-columbus-moored-at-blackwall-r1181279, accessed 25 April 2024.