Oil paint on canvas
Kent
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>
Shipping at Mouth Thames
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
boat - non-specific
England
England, South East
England, Southern
estuary
Kent
places
seascapes and coasts
ship, sailing
society
Thames Estuary
transport: water
UK counties
UK countries and regions
UK natural features
water: inland
wave
<p>In this unfinished painting, small craft are tossed about on choppy waves. The grey silhouette looming behind them is a Royal Navy guardship. Ready to defend in case of invasion, this guardship is perhaps the one stationed at the Nore, a sandbank near Sheerness on the Thames Estuary. Keen to depict such an important defensive location at a time when Britain was at war with France, Turner painted the Thames Estuary many times. This painting shows how he used loose, broad brushstrokes and pale colours to sketch out his composition and create light effects. The pale background gives it luminosity.</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
1 July 2002 – 20 March 2005
2005-03-20
1 July 2002 – 20 March 2005
2005-03-20
2002-07-01
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2002-07-01
Turner and the Modern World
Collection based display
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
12 August 2009 – 26 July 2010
2010-07-26
12 August 2009 – 26 July 2010
2010-07-26
2009-08-12
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2009-08-12
Turner on the Thames
Collection based display
21 November 2013 – 1 September 2014
2014-09-01
21 November 2013 – 21 April 2014
2014-04-21
2013-11-21
National Maritime Museum (London, UK)
http://www.nmm.ac.uk
4 June 2014 – 1 September 2014
2014-09-01
2014-06-04
Peabody Essex Museum (Salem, USA)
http://www.pem.org
2013-11-21
Turner and Marine Painting: Imagining the Sea, 1796 - 1899
Loan-out
30 July 2016 – 1 March 2020
2020-03-01
30 July 2016 – 1 March 2020
2020-03-01
2016-07-30
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2016-07-30
Clore 106 Sea Painter
Collection based display
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 105
Collection based display
13 March 2023
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2023-03-13
Gallery 106
Collection based display
Shipping at the Mouth of the Thames
support: 857 × 1168 mm
frame: 1160 × 1464 × 122 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 painting, small craft are tossed about on choppy waves. The grey silhouette looming behind them is a Royal Navy guardship. Ready to defend in case of invasion, this guardship is perhaps the one stationed at the Nore, a sandbank near Sheerness on the Thames Estuary. Keen to depict such an important defensive location at a time when Britain was at war with France, Turner painted the Thames Estuary many times. This painting shows how he used loose, broad brushstrokes and pale colours to sketch out his composition and create light effects. The pale background gives it luminosity.</p>
</div>

Display caption
2023-10-25T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
<p><b>175. </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-shipping-at-the-mouth-of-the-thames-n02702" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N02702</span></a>]<b> Shipping at the Mouth of the Thames</b> <i>c.</i>
1806–7
<br/>
<br/>THE TATE GALLERY, LONDON (2702)
<br/>Canvas, 33 3/4 × 46 (86 × 117)</p>
<p><b>Coll.</b> Turner Bequest 1856 (? one of 219–35); transferred to the Tate Gallery 1910.</p>
<p><b>Exh.</b> Tate Gallery 1931 (35); Venice 1938 (11); Amsterdam (repr.), Berne (repr.), Paris, Brussels (repr.), Liege (repr.) (13), Venice and Rome (14) 1947–8; Arts Council tour 1952 (3); R.A. 1974–5 (154); Leningrad and Moscow 1975–6 (14, repr.).</p>
<p><b>Lit.</b> Davies 1946, p. 189; Rothenstein and Butlin 1964, p. 24, pl. 38; Brill 1969, p. 13, as ‘North [<i>sic</i>] of the Thames’; Gage 1969, p. 37.</p>
<p></p>
<p>An unfinished variant of Turner's various pictures of 1807–9 of shipping in the Thames Estuary, particularly off Sheerness (see Nos. 62, 67, 74–6, 85 and 91); this example too seems to show Sheerness in the background. Various elements such as the laden small boats tossing on the waves are also found in the finished oils but no detail is identical.
<br/>
<br/>In technique, this <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/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a> is similar to the sketches of this size of scenes further up the Thames, some at least of which may have been done on the spot. However, it is difficult to imagine Turner managing a <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>canvas</span></a> of this size in the middle of the Thames Estuary.</p>
<p></p>
<p>[from]<b> Nos. 160–76: Large Thames Sketches <i>c.</i> 1806–7</b>
<br/>
<br/>THIS group of seventeen sketches on canvas from the Turner bequest, though carried to different degree of finish, are all similar in technique, being lightly painted over a dry chalky ground, and are all roughly similar in size save for <i>Sketch for ‘Harvest Dinner, Kingston Bank’</i>, which measures only 24 × 36 in. (No. 160 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-sketch-for-harvest-dinner-kingston-bank-n02696" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N02696</span></a>]). This last was used for the painting exhibited at Turner's gallery in 1809 and again in 1810 (No. 90 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-harvest-dinner-kingston-bank-n00491" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00491</span></a>]). Others are more loosely related to finished oil paintings exhibited in 1808, 1809 and 1810. A number of them are also related to <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/drawing" title="Glossary definition for 'Drawing'"><span>drawings</span></a> in the ‘Thames from Reading to Walton’ sketchbook, datable <i>c.</i> 1806 (XCV; pp. 22–3 are sketches for the pictures of Walton Bridges, paid for early in 1807, see Nos. 60 and 63); <i>c.f.</i> for example pp. 31 and 37 with No. 173 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-washing-sheep-n02699" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N02699</span></a>], and p. 35 with No. 172 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-willows-beside-a-stream-n02706" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N02706</span></a>]; there is a different view of Goring Church, the subject of No. 161 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-goring-mill-and-church-n02704" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N02704</span></a>], on p. 19. 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> of one example, <i>Trees beside a River, with a Bridge in the Middle Distance</i> (No. 169 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-trees-beside-the-river-with-bridge-in-the-middle-distance-n02692" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N02692</span></a>]), is very close to a drawing in the rather earlier ‘Studies for Pictures; Isleworth’ sketchbook, sandwiched between lists 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/c/classicism" title="Glossary definition for 'Classicism'"><span>classical</span></a> and Biblical subjects (XC-55 <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/r/recto-verso" title="Glossary definition for 'Recto / Verso'"><span>verso</span></a> and 56): for the evidence for dating this sketchbook <i>c.</i> 1804–5 see Nos. 149 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-windsor-castle-from-the-thames-t03870" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>T03870</span></a>] and 169 [<span>N02692</span>].
<br/>
<br/>There is reason to suppose that, contrary to Turner's usual practice, some if not all of these sketches were at least begun out-of-doors. Thornbury prints some reminiscences of the son of Turner's ‘oldest friend the Rev. Mr. Trimmer’, who had been out fishing with Turner when a child. ‘He had a boat at Richmond ... From his boat he painted on a large canvas direct from Nature. Till you have seen these sketches, you know nothing of Turner's powers. There are about two score of these large subjects, rolled up, and now national property ... There is a red sunset (simply the sky) among the rolls’. The last, probably the sadly darkened <i>Sunset</i> (No. 525 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-sunset-n01876" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N01876</span></a>]), is different in character from the works under discussion and is probably later, but the folded and battered condition of many of the Thames sketches such as Nos. 171[<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-river-scene-with-weir-in-middle-distance-n02703" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N02703</span></a>] and 173 [<span>N02699</span>] supports the identification with the works mentioned by Trimmer, as does the fact that the sketches seem to have been unstretched when they came to be relined early this century; indeed, some if not all may never have been stretched, No. 167 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-weir-and-cattle-n02705" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N02705</span></a>] for instance showing none of the usual pulling at the edges from the nails attaching a canvas to a stretcher. As in the case of two later groups of sketches on canvas, those painted in the Isle of Wight in 1827 (Nos. 260–268 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-sketch-for-east-cowes-castle-the-regatta-beating-to-windward-no-1-n01995" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N01995</span></a>-<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-study-of-sea-and-sky-isle-of-wight-n02001" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N02001</span></a>]) and those done in Rome 1828–9 (Nos. 302–317), Turner may have painted on rolls of canvas, working them over a frame to use different areas as required. If these sketches were always on loose canvases they may have been the ‘Roll of 17 separate Canvasses’, nos. 219 to 235 in the inventory of the Turner Bequest. All but one were first numbered, restored and put on public exhibition in 1910; No. 165 [<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-thames-glimpsed-between-trees-possibly-at-kew-bridge-n05519" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N05519</span></a>], which is in considerably worse condition, was not even numbered until 1944.
<br/>
<br/>Though Turner did not complete his own cottage at Twickenham, across the river from Richmond, until 1813, he already had a second home at Isleworth, not that much further from Richmond, by 23 May 1805 (see Youngblood <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 34 n. 9), and at Upper Mall, Hammersmith probably from late 1806 until 1811, and he could well have had a boat at Richmond during all this period. John Gage suggested in 1969 that this group of sketches was executed over a number of years from about 1807 to as late as <i>Crossing the Brook</i>, exhibited in 1815 (No. 130 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-crossing-the-brook-n00497" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00497</span></a>]); however in 1983 he accepted our dating for two of the sketches made on the Thames above London although dating one of the Thames estuary sketches (No. 176, <i>q.v </i>[<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-coast-scene-with-fishermen-and-boats-n02698" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N02698</span></a>].) to <i>c.</i> 1809. It is difficult to be sure of Turner's methods but the evidence of the sketchbooks and also of the groups of oil sketches that he is known to have painted on rolls of canvas, at Cowes in 1827 (Nos. 260–8 [<span>N01995</span>-<span>N02001</span>]) and in and around Rome in 1828 (Nos. 302–17) suggest that he was more likely to execute a whole run of sketches, varying in execution and degree of finish to a considerable extent, in a short time than to spread such series over periods of years. It seems likely therefore that Turner only used this rather unusual size and technique for this sort of sketch as a limited experiment.</p>
<p>
<br/><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
2004-09-23T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
boat - non-specific England England, South East England, Southern estuary Kent places seascapes and coasts ship, sailing society Thames Estuary transport: water UK counties UK countries and regions UK natural features water: inland wave