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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Margate and Life Drawing c.1830-40 > The Fire at Sea Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Shipping in Rough Waters c.1834

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Shipping in Rough Waters’ c.1834
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 4 Recto:
Shipping in Rough Waters c.1834
D27795
Turner Bequest CCLXXXII 4
Watercolour on brownish-grey wove paper 139 x 228 mm
Stamped in black ink ‘CCLXXXII 4’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This colour sketch of shipping caught in rough waters is one of several in this volume. For more information, see the sketchbook introduction.
Technical notes:
Art historian A.J. Finberg’s 1909 inventory of the Turner Bequest notes that this piece was removed for exhibition at the National Gallery in the nineteenth century with the number ‘161b’ and subsequently reincorporated into the sketchbook in its original position.1 Darker margins around the edge of the leaf indicate prolonged exposure to light.
1
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.908. Unusually, the work is not recorded in John Ruskin’s list of these exhibits; see E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn eds., Library Edition: The Works of John Ruskin: Volume XIII: Turner: The Harbours of England; Catalogues and Notes, London 1904, p.637.
Verso:
Inscribed in black ink with the note ‘cclxxxii.4’

John Chu
March 2015

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Shipping in Rough Waters c.1834 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-shipping-in-rough-waters-r1181656, accessed 22 November 2024.