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 At Chatham, on the River Medway c.1821

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘At Chatham, on the River Medway’ c.1821
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 22 Verso:
At Chatham, on the River Medway c.1821
D17403
Turner Bequest CXCIX 22a
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 is part of quite a substantial sequence of drawings made on the River Medway at Chatham.1 Here, the dominant prospect describes a fort, perhaps Fort Pitt, on the horizon, marking the crest of topography which gently ascends from Turner’s position on the river, or river bank. In the immediate foreground the rooftops of buildings form an intermittent zigzag across the page. A light craft is sketched in at right, briefly indicated with gestural markings for hull and mast.
At the top of the sheet a second sketch, composed with an even lighter touch, shows two vessels on the river, hemmed in by small slivers of unelaborated landscape.
For a comprehensive list of the pages in this sketchbook which include drawings of Chatham, see the entry for folio 22 recto (D17402).

Maud Whatley
January 2016

1
Finberg 1909, I, p.608.

How to cite

Maud Whatley, ‘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-at-chatham-on-the-river-medway-r1184680, accessed 20 September 2024.