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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Isle of Wight 1827 > Windsor and Cowes, Isle of Wight ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Buildings and Boats, Probably at Southampton 1827

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Buildings and Boats, Probably at Southampton’ 1827
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 11 Recto:
Buildings and Boats, Probably at Southampton 1827
D20612
Turner Bequest CCXXVI 10b
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 192 mm
Inscribed in blue pencil ‘226’ below centre, upside down
Inscribed ?in red ink by John Ruskin ‘[?10...]’ bottom right (now very faint)
Stamped in black ‘CCXXVI – 10b’ top left, upside down
The page was used inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation. There are slight sketches of buildings including a spire and possibly a gateway, as well as indications of sailing boats with vertical masts. There is a detailed Southampton waterfront study on folio 10 verso opposite (D20611), and the present views were probably recorded nearby, the spire being that of either St Michael’s Church or Holyrood; compare the contemporary Cowes Regatta sketchbook (Tate D18108–D18109; Turner Bequest CCVII 61a–62).
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Technical notes:
The sketches are very faint and appear partially erased, either by accident or design (active erasure being rare in Turner’s sketchbooks), and possibly suffered when the leaf was extracted to display the watercolour on the verso (D41016). Finberg only recorded a ‘Leaf cut out’ at this point in his 1909 Inventory,1 which he subsequently identified as bearing the watercolour, which was exhibited among Turner Bequest loans to Oxford University from 1878’ He noted the current face as folio ‘10b’, among ‘3 leaves found after Invy. was printed’2 (see the concordance in the Introduction).

Matthew Imms
November 2015

1
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.695.
2
Undated MS note by Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, II, opposite p.695.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Buildings and Boats, Probably at Southampton 1827 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-buildings-and-boats-probably-at-southampton-r1183252, accessed 21 November 2024.