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

This drawing is a dramatic evocation of a storm at sea. A hastily laid-in wash of blue watercolour for the sky suggests calmer conditions at the right, while a more violent weather system is at work on the left. Turner uses chalk to describe a dark, choppy sea and vigorous downwards sweeps of watercolour to signify gigantic waves or perhaps a sheet-like downpour. Together these elements dwarf and threaten to engulf a vessel, whose masts can just be made out in the centre of the vortex. A larger vessel sails on to the right while the vertical strokes of black chalk at the far left may represent the masts of an even larger ship.

The foreground is predominantly blank with some white and brown chalk. At the left these marks may represent ice with coils of a ship’s rope trapped within it and an anchor protruding from it, which as Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll have suggested,1 would relate it (along with D35245 and D35246; CCCLIII 6, 7) to the painting Turner exhibited in 1846, Whalers (Boiling Blubber) Entangled in Flaw Ice, Endeavouring to Extricate Themselves (Tate N00547).2

Technical Notes:

As with other leaves from this sketchbook (D35245, D35246; CCCLIII 6. 7) Turner’s coverage of the page has revealed a relief of the Whatman watermark, which appears upside down in the upper part of the sheet. In common with others, the leaf is loose of its binding.

Verso:

Blank, bearing adventitious marks in black watercolour and offsetting in black chalk; patches of discolouration probably as a result of damage in the Tate Gallery flood of 1928.