JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER

British, 1775–1851

A Storm (Shipwreck)

Watercolour and bodycolour on a three-ply London or Bristol board

4¾ x 7½ inches (125 x 189 mm)

Executed circa 1823.

Provenance: Private Collection, Sussex, 2010 Private Collection, Cambridgeshire, acquired from the above Literature; Andrew Wilton, Turner in the British Museum: Drawings and Watercolours, London, 1975, p. 62, no. 87, for illustration of the large watercolour The Storm in the collection of the British Museum; Kim Sloan, J.M.W. Turner: Watercolours from the R.W. Lloyd Bequest, British Museum, London, 1998, p. 86, no. 25, for discussion and illustration of the British Museum picture; Eric Shanes, The Life and Masterworks of J.M.W. Turner, New York, 2008, pp. 158-9, for illustration of the British Museum picture; also illustrated on the front cover

“This remarkable watercolour,” writes Andrew Wilton, “is a replica on a much reduced scale of the large subject measuring 17¾ x 25 inches (434 x 632 mm) that Turner executed for the engraver-publishers William Bernard and George Cooke in about 1823,” and is now in the collection of the British Museum [No. 1958,0712.424]. “Given the success with which [the present] drawing achieves a whole gamut of storm effects without a hint of insecurity or falsfication,” Mr. Wilton notes, “the conclusion must be that, despite the absence of parallels in Turner’s working practice, this is an authentic work by him, probably made for the benefit of an engraver intending to reproduce the large Storm as a small-scale plate. He may well have felt that the process of reduction could not be left to anyone else: too much intricate and atmospheric detail needed to be translated. Whether one of the Cookes intended to tackle it himself as a line-engraving, or they planned to give it to Lupton for mezzotinting, we shall perhaps never know.” [Andrew Wilton, Letter of authentication, 15 February, 2011]

The British Museum work was exhibited at W.B. Cooke's Exhibition of Drawings by British Artists at 9 Soho Square, London in 1823 with the title A Storm and was the companion to Calm (Sunrise). The reviewer of this exhibition for the Literary Gazette wrote of these "two and very splendid Drawings, by J.M.W. Turner RA in which the artist has depicted, with his usual ability, the powerful and sublime effect of a Shipwreck, contrasted with the quiet serenity of a Calm." [Literary Gazette, London, 24 May, 1823]

Eric Shanes describes the British Museum work, which was exhibited with the title Wreckers at the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition in 1857, as “undoubtedly the most ferocious seascape Turner ever created in watercolour." [Eric Shanes, The Life and Masterworks of J.M.W. Turner, New York, 2008, p. 158]

For an illustration of the related British Museum picture, refer to the museum’s website link below:

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1958-0712-424