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

In this sketch, a yellow horizon gives way to rain clouds which scatter showers over the sea. Having flooded the page with water, Turner alternated dark grey and blue glazes to create a sea and ‘lifted off’ passages to describe its textures. Meanwhile the clouds assume an almost solid mass as the rain falls in thick curving lines. The artist Mike Chaplin discovered that Turner achieved this heavy rainfall effect with his fingers.1 In these distinctive strokes, Robert K. Wallace perceived the ribs of a butchered whale carcass and connected it to Turner’s current interest in whaling imagery, as discussed under the entry on D35391 (Turner Bequest CCCLVII 6).2

On the other side of this sheet is D35398 (Turner Bequest CCCLVII 11a), inverted in relation to the present sketch.