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 > Cowes Regatta Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Ships and Boats under Sail; ?Rocks or a Small Island near Dover 1827

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Ships and Boats under Sail; ?Rocks or a Small Island near Dover’ 1827
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 12 Verso:
Ships and Boats under Sail; ?Rocks or a Small Island near Dover 1827
D18012
Turner Bequest CCVII 12a
Pencil on white wove paper, 74 x 100 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
There are two registers of sketches here, showing vessels of various sizes and configurations sailing. At the bottom right, isolated by a pencil border, is a slight landscape form of rocks or a small island, drawn with the page turned vertically in relation to the coastal sketches on folio 13 recto opposite (D18103), which may show Dover Castle.
The yacht at the bottom right is loosely comparable to one in the distance on the right of the painting Cowes Castle, the Seat of J. Nash, Esq.; the Regatta Beating to Windward, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1828 (Indianapolis Museum of Art).1 For more on studies in this sketchbook relating to the regatta events at Cowes from late July 1827 onwards, see the sketchbook Introduction.

Matthew Imms
December 2014

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.150 no.242, pl.246 (colour).

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Ships and Boats under Sail; ?Rocks or a Small Island near Dover 1827 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2014, 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-ships-and-boats-under-sail-rocks-or-a-small-island-near-r1183500, accessed 25 April 2024.