Oil paint on canvas
Tate Britain
Tate Collection
Works with images
Works on display
Joseph Mallord William Turner
Turner Bequest
Oil paintings
Collection
Turner owned by Tate
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/joseph-mallord-william-turner-558" aria-label="More by Joseph Mallord William Turner" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Joseph Mallord William Turner</a>
Yacht Approaching Coast
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
architecture
astronomy
boat, yacht
coast
sea
seascapes and coasts
society
sun
townscape, distant
townscapes / man-made features
transport: water
<p>In this unfinished sea painting the light of the sun, reflected by the water, dazzles the eye and obscures the view. This visual effect echoes the progress of Turner’s own work on the painting. He returned to areas of the canvas over a period of several years, covering the original subject. Dark shapes that appear through the layers might be boats. The buildings on the left may represent Venice. By reworking the canvas Turner has shifted the focus of this painting from the yacht to a less tangible subject – that of light itself.</p><p><em>Gallery label, October 2023</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
18 February 2002 – 26 May 2002
2002-05-26
18 February 2002 – 26 May 2002
2002-05-26
2002-02-18
Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore, USA)
http://www.artbma.org
4 October 2002 – 12 January 2003
2003-01-12
2002-10-04
Fundación Juan March (Madrid, Spain)
http://www.march.es
14 February 2003 – 30 April 2003
2003-04-30
2003-02-14
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian (Lisbon, Portugal)
http://www.museu.gulbenkian.pt/
2002-02-18
Turner - Baltimore
Tate partnerships & programmes
18 February 2002 – 26 October 2002
2002-10-26
18 February 2002 – 26 May 2002
2002-05-26
2002-02-18
Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore, USA)
http://www.artbma.org
4 September 2002 – 19 January 2003
2003-01-19
2002-09-04
Fundación Juan March (Madrid, Spain)
http://www.march.es
20 February 2003 – 18 May 2003
2003-05-18
2003-02-20
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Lisbon, Portugal)
2002-02-18
Turner and the Sea
Tate partnerships & programmes
9 June 2003 – 10 May 2004
2004-05-10
9 June 2003 – 8 September 2003
2003-09-08
2003-06-09
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute (Williamstown, USA)
http://www.clarkart.edu/
24 October 2003 – 3 January 2004
2004-01-03
2003-10-24
Manchester Art Gallery (Manchester, UK)
http://www.manchestergalleries.org
15 February 2004 – 10 May 2004
2004-05-10
2004-02-15
Burrell Collection (Glasgow, UK)
2003-06-09
Turner: The Late Seascapes
Loan-out
1 November 2005 – 15 February 2006
2006-02-15
1 November 2005 – 15 February 2006
2006-02-15
2005-11-01
Reynolda House Museum of American Art (Winston-Salem, USA)
http://www.reynoldahouse.org
2005-11-01
Reciprocal loan for 'American Sublime'
Loan-out
10 April 2006 – 12 March 2007
2007-03-12
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2006-04-10
Impressions and Ideas Turner's Oil Sketches and Studies
Collection based display
1 June 2007 – 15 March 2009
2009-03-15
1 June 2007
2007-06-01
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2007-06-01
Interrupted Visions: Oil Sketches 1820s-1840s
Collection based display
20 March 2009 – 3 August 2009
2009-08-03
20 March 2009
2009-03-20
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2009-03-20
Painting Set Free: Turner at the Museum of Modern Art, New York 1966
Collection based display
12 August 2009 – 27 July 2010
2010-07-27
12 August 2009 – 27 July 2010
2010-07-27
2009-08-12
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2009-08-12
Waves, Whalers and Wrecks
Collection based display
2 June 2011 – 22 April 2012
2012-04-22
28 January 2012 – 22 April 2012
2012-04-22
2012-01-28
Turner Contemporary (Margate, UK)
2011-06-02
Turner and the Elements
Loan-out
13 July 2012 – 30 November 2014
2014-11-30
20 July 2012 – 30 November 2014
2014-11-30
2012-07-20
Tate Modern (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/
2012-07-13
Abstraction and the Sublime
Collection based display
21 March 2018 – 10 January 2021
2021-01-10
16 March 2020 – 10 January 2021
2021-01-10
2020-03-16
Musée Jacquemart-André (Paris, France)
2018-03-21
Turner Watercolours
Tate partnerships & programmes
6 April 2020 – 27 November 2022
2022-11-27
6 April 2020
2020-04-06
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2020-04-06
Clore 104
Collection based display
13 March 2023
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2023-03-13
Gallery 103
Collection based display
Yacht Approaching the Coast
support: 1022 × 1422 mm
frame: 1250 × 1635 × 75 mm
Accepted by the nation as part of the <a href="/search?gid=999999781" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Turner Bequest</a> 1856
<div class="text">
<p>In this unfinished sea painting the light of the sun, reflected by the water, dazzles the eye and obscures the view. This visual effect echoes the progress of Turner’s own work on the painting. He returned to areas of the canvas over a period of several years, covering the original subject. Dark shapes that appear through the layers might be boats. The buildings on the left may represent Venice. By reworking the canvas Turner has shifted the focus of this painting from the yacht to a less tangible subject – that of light itself.</p>
</div>

Display caption
2023-10-25T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
<p>[from]<b> Nos. 453–86: Late Unfinished Sea Pieces, <i>c</i>. 1830–45</b></p>
<p>THERE are two main problems about this group of works. The first is the question of dating: the dates adopted here are highly tentative and are based on the supposition that there is a logical progression from a more substantial, three-dimensional style to one that is more impressionistic and less solid, together with a feeling that Turner's colouring was perhaps at its strongest from the early to the mid 1830s. However, as will be noted, the compilers do not always agree on even the tentative datings given here. In any case, what may look like a less three-dimensional picture may in fact be merely a less finished picture.</p>
<p>The second problem is that of <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/provenance" title="Glossary definition for 'Provenance'"><span>provenance</span></a> and authenticity, in particular as it concerns smaller pictures outside the Turner Bequest, Nos. 474–84, together with the somewhat similar works no longer accepted as genuine, Nos. 555–8. That some such unfinished works escaped the Turner Bequest is certain, and a foundation is provided by those works that can be definitely or tentatively traced to John Pound, the son by her first marriage of Mrs Booth, Turner's mistress and housekeeper. In reviews of our first edition, exception was taken to some of our attributions by Luke Herrmann (Nos. 475, 478 and 484) and Jerrold Ziff (Nos. 480 and 481); interestingly, they do not agree. Of the works they doubt, No. 478 seems definitely to have been in the Pound sale at Christie's in 1865, while Nos. 480, 481 and 484 bear labels or are said to come from the Pound family.</p>
<p>However, one should never let an apparently sound provenance stand in the way of one's judgment based on the visual evidence, and in this case there is one further element, the fact that, from 1848, for apparently the only time in his life, Turner employed an assistant, Francis Sherrell. According to Bernard Falk (1938, p. 213), whose reference is based on an obituary in the <i>Isle of Thanet Gazette</i> for 23 September 1916, Turner gave Sherrell lessons in return for various services such as stretching his <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/canvas" title="Glossary definition for 'Canvas'"><span>canvases</span></a> and running errands; John Gage (1969, p. 171) suggests that Sherrell may also have cleaned some of the pictures in Turner's studio at the instigation of the dealer Thomas Griffith, who was active in trying to obtain sales for Turner at this time. Nothing further seems to be known about Sherrell save that he died at Thanet in 1916. It is perhaps an unworthy suspicion to suggest that he, more than anybody else, would have been in a position to imitate Turner's late style and that such imitations could have been left in Turner's studio and acquired by the Pound family.</p>
<p>Another suspicious circumstance is that, although Turner tended to work on standard sizes of canvas, only a few of those of this group of pictures that are outside the Turner Bequest can be matched with works in the Bequest: No. 472, near enough Turner's standard three feet by four feet; No. 474, much the same size as Nos. 457 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-waves-breaking-against-the-wind-n02881" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N02881</span></a>] and 458 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-waves-breaking-on-a-lee-shore-at-margate-study-for-rockets-and-blue-lights-n02882" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N02882</span></a>]; Nos. 475, 482, and 556a, close to No. 459 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-waves-breaking-on-a-shore-n05495" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N05495</span></a>]; and Nos. 483 and 484, the same size as Nos. 485 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-riders-on-a-beach-d36675" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>D36675</span></a>] and 486.</p>
<p><b>Lit.</b> Rothenstein and Butlin 1964, p. 62; Herrmann 1978, p. 773; Wilton 1979, p. 224; Ziff 1980, p. 167.</p>
<p></p>
<p><b>461. </b>[<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-yacht-approaching-the-coast-n04662" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N04662</span></a>]<b> Yacht approaching the Coast</b> <i>c.</i>
1835–40</p>
<p>THE TATE GALLERY, LONDON (4662)</p>
<p>Canvas, 40 1/4 × 56 (102 × 142)</p>
<p><b>Coll.</b> Turner Bequest 1856 (? 266, 1 unidentified 4'8 1/2" × 3'4 1/2"); transferred to the Tate Gallery 1938.</p>
<p><b>Exh.</b> Amsterdam, Berne, Paris (repr.), Brussels, Liege (38), Venice (repr.) and Rome (repr.) (47) 1947–8; Paris 1953 (87); Rotterdam 1955 (61, repr.); New York 1966 (22, repr. in colour p. 34); R.A. 1974–5 (494, repr. in colour p. 118).</p>
<p><b>Lit.</b> Rothenstein and Butlin 1964, pp. 60–62, pl. 118; Gowing 1966, pp. 27, 31, 38, repr. in colour p. 34; Paulson 1982, pp. 81, 83, 93, pl. 44.</p>
<p>The rather unusual size is shared by <i>Stormy Sea with Blazing Wreck</i>
(No. 462 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-stormy-sea-with-blazing-wreck-n04658" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N04658</span></a>]) to which this picture is perhaps the counterpart, light against dark. The <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/composition" title="Glossary definition for 'Composition'"><span>composition</span></a>, though not the mood, is remarkably similar to <i>Slavers</i>, exhibited in 1840 (No. 385), though <i>Yacht approaching the Coast</i> can perhaps be dated a few years earlier. It has been suggested that the heavily worked surface covers forms of gondolas, and that the town on the left was originally conceived as Venice; the underlying composition would have been something like that of <i>Procession of Boats with Distant Smoke, Venice</i> (No. 505 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-the-arrival-of-louis-philippe-at-the-royal-clarence-yard-gosport-8-october-1844-n02068" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N02068</span></a>]), though that is usually dated rather later.</p>
<p>The <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/i/impasto" title="Glossary definition for 'Impasto'"><span>impasto</span></a> has been flattened during relining.</p>
<p><b>Published in:</b>
<br/>Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, <i>The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner</i>, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984
<br/></p>

Catalogue entry
2004-10-06T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
architecture astronomy boat, yacht coast sea seascapes and coasts society sun townscape, distant townscapes / man-made features transport: water