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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Louis-Philippe at Portsmouth 1844 > Louis-Philippe at Portsmouth sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The 'Gomer' Arriving in Portsmouth Harbour, Attended by Sailing Boats 1844

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The 'Gomer' Arriving in Portsmouth Harbour, Attended by Sailing Boats’ 1844
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 18 Verso:
The ‘Gomer’ Arriving in Portsmouth Harbour, Attended by Sailing Boats 1844
D35718
Turner Bequest CCCLXII 18a
Pencil on white wove paper, 74 x 116 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, this drawing shows the starboard side of the large hybrid sail-steamship Gomer, which carried Louis-Philippe, King of the French, into Portsmouth Harbour on 8 October 1844. The vessel was characterised by its high paddle wheel housing amidships, as Ian Warrell has noted, and ‘towered over those accompanying it’.1
There are many other rapid studies in this sketchbook relating to Louis-Philippe’s arrival, as discussed in the Introductions to the book and the overall section, including a similar study on folios 17 verso–18 recto (D35716–D35717); for other views of the Gomer see under folio 1 verso (D35686).

Matthew Imms
September 2016

1
Warrell 2013, p.10.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The ‘Gomer’ Arriving in Portsmouth Harbour, Attended by Sailing Boats 1844 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2016, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-gomer-arriving-in-portsmouth-harbour-attended-by-sailing-r1185662, accessed 22 November 2024.