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

Across this and the facing page on folio 42 recto (D17435) Turner makes a number of studies of rigging and other paraphernalia associated with the architecture of a ship of the line, with the sketchbook inverted relative to its foliation. On the present sheet, he seems to describe the bowsprit and jib-boom. The bowsprit is effectively an additional mast; a large spar or boom which runs out from the bow of a vessel, to which the foremast stays are fastened.1 In the larger sketch, at top left, the details of this spar are recorded, emerging from the gutter of the sketchbook.

Above the sketch of the bowsprit, even closer to the top of the sheet, a pair of diagonal, parallel lines belongs to a similar composition on the facing page. However, these represent a jib-boom, an additional spar which extended the reach of the bowsprit. Turner elaborates a jib-boom in more detail on the current page, to the immediate right of the bowsprit drawing. Similar in shape and identical in angle, it is attached by a cap at its heel to the end of the bowsprit.

Technical notes:

A small, brown, circular stain marks this page slightly above its centre.