Joseph Mallord William Turner South Quay at Yarmouth c.1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 24 Verso:
South Quay at Yarmouth c.1824
D18203
Turner Bequest CCIX 24a
Turner Bequest CCIX 24a
Pencil on white wove paper, 115 x 118 mm
Watermarked ‘al[lee] | 18[19]’
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘R’ top left, ‘W’ top left towards centre left, ‘G’ top left towards centre, ‘S[...]’ top right, ‘[...]by [...]’ top right towards centre, ‘P’ centre towards right
Watermarked ‘al[lee] | 18[19]’
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘R’ top left, ‘W’ top left towards centre left, ‘G’ top left towards centre, ‘S[...]’ top right, ‘[...]by [...]’ top right towards centre, ‘P’ centre towards right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.633, CCIX 24a, as ‘Buildings, shipping &c.’.
1979
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.394 under no.810.
1990
Frank Milner, J.M.W. Turner: Paintings in Merseyside Collections: Walker Art Gallery; Sudley Art Gallery; Williamson Art Gallery; Lady Lever Art Gallery; Liverpool University Art Gallery, Liverpool 1990, p.75 under no.39.
These three detailed views were taken at the thriving port of Yarmouth on the Norfolk coast. Turner depicts the South Quay there, with its parade of merchants’ houses, storehouses, halls, taverns, customs offices, and eighteenth-century residences. The lowermost prospect, which was rendered with the sketchbook turned upside down, shows a drawbridge crossing the River Yare. John Henry Druery, author of The Historical and Topographical Notices of Great Yarmouth (1826), writes that the wooden drawbridge was erected in 1785 to replace its medieval original. The ‘middle arch’, Druery writes, ‘is raised by the mechanical power of four cast-iron wheels, at the extremities of which chains are attached, and a hand rope’.1
Further sketches of the quay are found on Tate D18194–D18196, D18202, D18204; Turner Bequest CCIX 20–21, 24, 25. Turner’s sketches of Yarmouth are associated with designs for both the England and Wales (Tate impression T04547) and East Coast engraving schemes, though the latter design, housed at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, was unpublished.2
Alice Rylance-Watson
January 2015
How to cite
Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘South Quay at Yarmouth c.1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2016, https://www