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

This watercolour and pencil study captures a teal, a distinctive species of small dabbling duck, in movement. A related sheet also included within this section of the catalogue shows a teal flying (Tate D25464; Turner Bequest CCLXIII 341). Unlike many of Turner’s other natural history studies, both drawings depict a living, moving bird, leading John Ruskin to note the ‘brightness, refinement, and active energy in the drawing of the living bird’ (see also the entry for Tate D25464; Turner Bequest CCLXIII 341).1 There are numerous pencil lines surrounding the more finished part of the drawing showing the duck in varying positions, hinting at Turner’s process in capturing the lively pose he had in mind, and, by their very survival on the sheet, adding to the sense of movement. In contrast to these loose marks are a number of very highly finished areas, with the fine details of the feathers and beak depicted in great detail. While the shining green wing feathers are suggested with large brushstrokes, the fluffy feathers on the body of the duck are finely painted, with delicate black marks giving additional definition.

As Anne Lyles has noted, this watercolour is too large for the Farnley Hall Ornithological Collection that Turner made bird drawings for (for information about this project, see the introduction to this section), but it might still have been made at Farnley, the Yorkshire home of Turner’s friend and patron, Walter Fawkes.2 Certainly, like other drawings in this grouping, it relates to those made for the Ornithological Collection in terms of style, subject matter and, it is presumed, date.

Ruskin called this and other bird drawings by Turner ‘more utterly inimitable, than, so far as I know, anything else he had done’.3 Lyles pointed out that an additional outcome of Ruskin’s admiration of this and similar studies by Turner is found in Ruskin’s own drawings of ducks and birds made after Turner’s lifetime, notably his Study of a Dead Wild Duck of 1867 (British Museum, London).4

Verso:

Blank; inscribed in pencil ‘89’ upper right, and ‘CCLXIII 340’ bottom centre; stamped in black ‘CCLXIII 340’ bottom left, and with Turner Bequest monogram bottom left.