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

Finberg first connected this blustery coastal scene, which he called ‘Firing rockets on the coast. Probably at Yarmouth’,1 Norfolk, with the painting Life-Boat and Manby Apparatus Going Off to a Stranded Vessel Making Signal (Blue Lights) of Distress, exhibited in 1831 (Victoria and Albert Museum, London).2 The dramatic narrative composition depicts Captain G.W. Manby’s ‘lightball’ (effectively a small cannonball with burning fuses, fired from a mortar rather than rocket-propelled), descending somewhat perilously over a ship firing flares, to deliver an attached rope to reel it in.3 Its trajectory from the shore is not emphasised, however (see also the 1859 engraving; Tate impression: T06337).

Most later sources have followed Finberg with varying degrees of certainty.4 Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll have concurred that the present work ‘depicts firing rockets on the coast’ and ‘appears definitely to represent Yarmouth as both the pier and the Nelson Monument are shown’.5 While noting Graham Reynolds’s idea of it as a study for the painting rather than a sketch of it from memory,6 they observe that ‘the handling is so loose that it may date from after 1831’.7 The majority of Turner’s direct sketches of Great Yarmouth are in the Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex sketchbook of 1824 (Tate; Turner Bequest CCIX).

Andrew Wilton has differed completely, describing the subject as a study of a rainbow over a pier, and suggesting that its fresh greys and greens could rather associate it with studies made along the French coast at Dieppe in 1845;8 compare for example Tate D35476 (Turner Bequest CCCLX 18) in the Dieppe sketchbook. The pale arc over the horizon corresponds with the oddly colourless rainbows in late studies such as Tate D34993 or D36302 (Turner Bequest CCCXLV 21, CCCLXV 12). Nevertheless, reflecting the otherwise long-standing consensus, the present work remains associated with the Yarmouth painting here, although a definite connection is effectively unprovable given the compositional differences.

Technical notes:

There is closed tear running 23 mm in from the left-hand edge.

Verso:

Blank; there are slight marks in chalk or crayon towards the bottom left, with a horizontal stroke and a vertical not quite intersecting above a rounded shape. It is unclear whether these are intended as letters, numbers or a diagram, or who made them.