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

This is among dozens of blue paper studies presumably made in connection with the Cowes Regatta events in the late summer of 1827; for several other closely observed studies of individual vessels, see the Introduction to this subsection. Here several gunports are evident, and a pale band of paint along the vessel’s side is highlighted. The same ship appears to be shown from the same angle in the background of Cowes Harbour, a finished pencil composition apparently given to a fellow guest at East Cowes Castle in 1827 (private collection);1 it and other drawings outside the Turner Bequest are discussed in the Introduction.

The present sheet is among a handful now identified as Isle of Wight-related subjects which had been categorised in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory in a large section of blue paper ‘Meuse-Moselle’ subjects of about 1826,2 albeit some of which ‘may belong to the “Rivers of France” series, or even to the Italian tour of 1828’;3 it was among many ‘done up in four parcels’ variously labelled by John Ruskin as ‘Scrawls’ and ‘Rubbish’.4

Verso:

Blank; inscribed in pencil ‘52 | O’ bottom right; inscribed in pencil ‘152’ top left, ascending vertically. The first number signifies that the sheet was once in one of Ruskin’s four numbered parcels noted above, in this case of ‘Chalk on grey. Scrawls’.1