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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Isle of Wight 1827 > Windsor and Cowes, Isle of Wight ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Group of Figures, Perhaps Watching Cowes Regatta 1827

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Group of Figures, Perhaps Watching Cowes Regatta’ 1827
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 68 Verso:
A Group of Figures, Perhaps Watching Cowes Regatta 1827
D20700
Turner Bequest CCXXVI 65a
Pencil on white wove paper, 192 x 112 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The drawing, made with the page turned vertically, shows a disparate group of figures, including soldiers in plumed helmets and perhaps children, on a slope with masts beyond. They are likely to be spectators on the shore at Cowes Regatta; compare the variety of figures in Turner’s 1827 oil Sketch for ‘East Cowes Castle, the Regatta Starting for Their Moorings’ No.3 (Tate N01997)1 and the subsequent painting East Cowes Castle, the Seat of J. Nash, Esq.; the Regatta Starting for their Moorings, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1828 (Victoria and Albert Museum, London).2 There is another crowd on folio 69 recto opposite (D20701; Turner Bequest CCXXVI 66); for other spectators see under folio 13 recto (D20615; Turner Bequest CCXXVI 12).
For more on studies in this sketchbook relating to the regatta events at Cowes from late July 1827 onwards, see the Introduction.

Matthew Imms
November 2015

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.161 no.265, pl.270 (colour).
2
Ibid., pp.150–1 no.243, pl.247 (colour).

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Group of Figures, Perhaps Watching Cowes Regatta 1827 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 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-group-of-figures-perhaps-watching-cowes-regatta-r1183342, accessed 26 April 2024.