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

Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, the view is from a harbour, perhaps with a lighthouse at the left, with vessels at sea beyond including a steamer trailing heavy ‘G[rey]’ smoke. The significance of Turner’s urgent ‘Stop Her’ is unclear, but may record unfolding events: there are other sails and masts in proximity and perhaps in danger of collision, as so often depicted in Turner’s busy finished seascapes. See the sketchbook’s Introduction for the many slight coastal and shipping views and inscribed studies of clouds and the sun over the sea scattered through it. The setting might be Margate in this case, with the stone pier on the left, looking north to where steamers would dock at the long wooden jetty; see under folio 108 recto (D35683).

David Blayney Brown has noted that Finberg’s comparison of motifs in this sketchbook (see also folio 6 recto; D35497) with watercolour studies in the contemporary Ideas of Folkestone sketchbook (in this case Tate D35363; Turner Bequest CCCLVI 3)1 ‘need not be coincidental, for Turner was still thinking pictorially, and gathering information for a purpose.’2

Technical notes:

The whole page has darkened, possibly as a result of water damage in the 1928 Tate flood.