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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Figures on a Beach c.1826-45 > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Sailing Ship c.1826-40

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Sailing Ship’ c.1826-40
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
A Sailing Ship c.1826–40
D40112
Pencil on blue wove paper, 144 x 192 mm
Inscribed by ?John Ruskin in pencil ‘232 | O’ top left, upside down
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
There is a drawing of figures on the recto (D25059; Turner Bequest CCLXI 87). The slight drawing of a ship with sails set, seen from head on or astern, is not specifically mentioned in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory, although even the recto is only mentioned in general terms, as part of a ‘bundle of sketches, mostly very slight in character ... Some of the subjects are French, others may belong to North Italy, &c.’1
Finberg recorded that most of the Turner Bequest CCLXI grouping was ‘in a bundle labelled by Mr. [John] Ruskin – “0,231. Chalk scrawls on grey. Rubbish.”’2 In this case the number inscribed on the sheet is ‘232’, which Finberg noted as corresponding with the number on another of Ruskin’s parcel labels, for a group again comprising ‘Chalk scrawls on grey. Rubbish.’3

Matthew Imms
December 2015

1
See A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.813, CCLXI 1–128.
2
Ibid.
3
Ibid., p.702.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Sailing Ship c.1826–40 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-sailing-ship-r1182597, accessed 27 April 2024.