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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Clouds over the Sea and a Beach, Perhaps near Ostend ?1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Clouds over the Sea and a Beach, Perhaps near Ostend ?1840
D33671
Turner Bequest CCCXL 6
Watercolour on white wove paper, 212 x 276 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom centre
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘6’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCXL 6’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Three fluid, assured colour studies in this sketchbook (D33671–D33673; Turner Bequest CCCXL 6, 7, 8) are thematically unrelated to the colour and pencil studies of sites within a concentrated area along the rivers around Passau in south-eastern Germany, from which it takes its current title (see the Introduction), instead perhaps ‘evoking instead the heavy skies of the English Channel’, as Ian Warrell has noted.1 John Ruskin had assessed them as ‘mere effects’.2
Turner’s extensive Continental itinerary back towards London from Venice and a brief voyage along the Adriatic coast to Trieste (see the Trieste, Graz and Danube sketchbook; Tate; Turner Bequest CCXCIX) concluded with numerous pencil studies at Ostend on the Belgian North Sea coast (see under Tate D30460; Turner Bequest CCCIII 1, in the Würzburg, Rhine and Ostend book). There are a few relatively featureless sea studies associated with its Lagoon setting, gathered in a parallel subsection of this tour. The skies here seem more muted, and may have been directly observed while awaiting embarkation, or perhaps recollected shortly afterwards.
There are many such topographically unspecific studies on separate sheets from Turner’s later years; see John Chu’s ‘Coastal Scenes and Shipping c.1820–45’ section of this catalogue, often with the horizon placed quite high as the fulcrum between the sky and water. Compare for example Tate D35921, D35924 and D35995 (Turner Bequest CCCLXIV 78, 81, 151). It is no doubt fortuitous that the Como and Venice sketchbook, used for Turner’s first colour studies of the city in 1819, also contains similar exercises (Tate D15261–D15264; Turner Bequest CLXXXI 10–13).
1
Warrell 2014, p.193.
2
Quoted in Finberg 1909, II, p.1064.
Technical notes:
A strong acid green has been used for the sea, and is also present in the clouds. There is a thin streak of undiluted yellow towards the bottom right, and another spot at the bottom left.
Verso:
Blank; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram over ‘CCCXL – 6’ bottom right.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Clouds over the Sea and a Beach, Perhaps near Ostend ?1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-clouds-over-the-sea-and-a-beach-perhaps-near-ostend-r1196213, accessed 31 October 2024.