Fishing boats off Hastings

Details

Joseph Mallord William Turner, R.A. (1775-1851)
Fishing boats off Hastings
pencil and watercolour with scratching out
7¼ x 11 7/8 in. (18.4 x 30.1 cm.)

Provenance

Possibly with Agnew's London, where purchased by
Sam Mendel of Manley Hall, by whom sold to
Agnew's, London, 1872, where purchased by
James Price, by whom sold to
Agnew's, London, 1873, where purchased by
Andrew G. Kurtz of Wavertree, Liverpool; Christie's, London, 11 May 1891, lot 199 (170 gns. to Agnew's).
with Agnew's, London, 1891, where purchased by
Francis Stevenson, by whom sold through
The Fine Art Society, London to
Agnew's, London, 1902, where purchased by E. Nettlefold of Harborne Hall, Birmingham; Christie's, London, 11 June 1909, lot 169 (350 gns. to Agnew's).
with Agnew's, London, where purchased May 1911 by William Kenrick, £400 and by descent in the family.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis

Sale room notice

It has been suggested that the watercolour may have been executed circa 1827 and is similar in size to a group of watercolours linked to the unrealised English Channel project of this date. (For further information see I. Warrell, Turner on the Loire, London 1997, pp. 158-171).

We are grateful to Ian Warrell of the Tate Gallery for his assistance.

Lot Essay

This apparently unrecorded watercolour was presumably painted at much the same time as Turner's view of Hastings and Sussex for various topographical publications. A larger, more elaborate version of the composition, signed and dated 1818, was done for W.B. Cooke's projected but unpublished Views at Hastings (15 x 23¼ in., Lloyd Collection, London, British Museum; A. Wilton, The Life and Works of J.M.W.Turner, Fribourg and London, 1979, p. 357, no. 504, illustrated; see also E. Shanes, Turner's Rivers, Harbours and Coasts, London, 1981, pp. 20-21, no. 13, illustrated in colour, and E. Shanes, 'Views in Sussex', E. Joll, M. Butlin and L. Herrmann, ed. The Oxford Companion to J.M.W. Turner, Oxford, 2001, p. 322; K. Sloan, J.M.W. Turner: Watercolours from the R.W. Lloyd Bequest to the British Museum, London, 1998, p. 80, no. 22, illustrated in colour). The composition was further elaborated in the oil painting Line-Fishing off Hastings, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1835 (London, Victoria and Albert Museum; M. Butlin and E. Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, New Haven and London, 2nd edition, 1984, p. 214, no. 363, illustrated pl. 368). The composition is based in general terms on drawings in the Hastings Sketchbook, watermarked 1815 (London, Tate Britain, Turner Bequest CXXXIX - 22a, 23, and 23a and 24). The present watercolour seems therefore to date from between 1815 and 1818.

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