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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > History Painting c.1799-1807 > Calais Pier Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Study for 'Sun Rising through Vapour; Fishermen Cleaning and Selling Fish' c.1799-1805

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Study for 'Sun Rising through Vapour; Fishermen Cleaning and Selling Fish'’ c.1799-1805
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 20 Verso:
Study for ‘Sun Rising through Vapour; Fishermen Cleaning and Selling Fish’ c.1799–1805
D04941
Turner Bequest LXXXI 40
Black and white chalks and brown chalk or gouache on blue laid paper, 271 x 436 mm
Watermarks ‘1794’ and ‘VI’
Inscribed by Turner in ink ‘Study Calm’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘LXXXI–40’ bottom right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Made with the page turned horizontally, this is the most elaborately worked out of the sequence of studies in this book for the canvas exhibited in 1807, Sun Rising through Vapour; Fishermen Cleaning and Selling Fish (National Gallery, London);1 see under folio 12 verso (D04925; Turner Bequest LXXXI 24). Turner had been refining his ideas on the subject of shipping in a calm in a number of drawings in the Studies for Pictures sketchbook, for example Tate D04140–D04142 (Turner Bequest LXIX 123, 124, 125); for what is apparently a crucial stage in the evolution of the subject in that book, see Tate D04133 (Turner Bequest LXIX 116).
As the personnel of the finished picture indicate, with their seventeenth–century Dutch costume, the artist’s inspiration for this type of subject derived from the work of such Dutch marine painters as Jan van de Capelle (1626–1679) and Aelbert Cuyp (1620–1691), as well as their eighteenth–century followers in England, Peter Monamy (1681–1749) and Charles Brooking (1723–1759).

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

1
Butlin and Joll 1984, pp.53–4 no.69, pl.79 (colour).

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Study for ‘Sun Rising through Vapour; Fishermen Cleaning and Selling Fish’ c.1799–1805 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-study-for-sun-rising-through-vapour-fishermen-cleaning-and-r1178145, accessed 27 December 2024.