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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Folkestone and the Medway c.1821-2 > Medway Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Vessels at Chatham, on the River Medway c.1821

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Vessels at Chatham, on the River Medway’ c.1821
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 19 Verso:
Vessels at Chatham, on the River Medway c.1821
D17397
Turner Bequest CXCIX 19a
Partial watermark ‘nard | 20’
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 190 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
As identified by Finberg, this page describes vessels at Chatham on the River Medway.1 Two ships of the line occupy the foreground, seemingly beached; a suggestion prompted by the visibility of the hulls and their distance from the lightly pencilled diagonal across the bottom left corner which seems to mark the line of the tide. At far left, additional boats are described in the distance. At far right, an angular, zigzagging line seems to represent buildings along the harbour front. Land rises up behind all of these components, levelling off quickly to present a flat prospect across the right half of the sheet.
For a comprehensive list of drawings in this sketchbook which take Chatham as their subject, see the entry for folio 22 recto (D17402).

Maud Whatley
January 2016

1
Finberg 1909, I, p.608.

How to cite

Maud Whatley, ‘Vessels at Chatham, on the River Medway c.1821 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2016, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, February 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-vessels-at-chatham-on-the-river-medway-r1184674, accessed 26 April 2024.