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

This is among dozens of blue paper studies presumably made in connection with the Cowes Regatta events in the late summer of 1827; see the Introduction to this subsection for other views of Cowes Castle. Here the barbican of Cowes Castle is shown above the shore on the right, with East Cowes Castle picked out on the skyline to the south-east across the mouth of the River Medina. Albeit from a slightly different viewpoint, the general arrangement is comparable with that adopted for the 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).1

As noted in the Introduction, the present work and thirty-four other sheets were recorded in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory as unmounted, and ‘formed part of [a] parcel’ labelled by John Ruskin ‘O. 232. Chalk scrawls on grey. Rubbish.’2

Verso:

Blank; inscribed in red ink ‘41[?9]’ bottom left; inscribed in pencil ‘419’ top left; inscribed in pencil ‘CCXXVIII . 44’ bottom right. Despite Finberg’s statement that this sheet was unmounted, the remnants of white mounting paper or tape are evident at the corners.