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

Jan Piggott has identified this unfinished watercolour as a preparatory study for Columbus Setting Sail, the second of seven illustrations that Turner produced for Rogers’s long poem, ‘The Voyage of Columbus’ (see Tate D27706; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 189). The study shows a church on a small verdant outcrop, along with a white pillared building on the far left which Piggott suggests may be Palos in the Gulf of Cadiz. Turner’s finished version also shows a basilica resting on a promontory, although it appears from a different and more distant perspective. Furthermore, several masts have been hastily drawn in pencil on the right side of the composition, possibly to suggest Columbus’s departing ships.

The style and medium of this sketch are typical of Turner’s preparatory studies for Rogers’s Poems, which tend to be executed in pencil and light watercolour wash. Another preliminary design has also been identified for Columbus Setting Sail (see Tate D27536; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 19)

Verso:

Inscribed by unknown hands in pencil ‘AB 117 P | M’ bottom right and ‘CCLXIII.18’ lower right