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>
A Wreck with Fishing Boats
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
boat, fishing
emotions, concepts and ideas
formal qualities
gestural
sea
seascapes and coasts
shipwreck
society
transport: water
<p>Turner creates texture here with a palette knife, applying paint in sharp flicks to suggest a frothing, rough sea. Although it is unfinished, the layers of colours Turner uses to form the sea – white, grey, blue, brown – already create a sense of depth and complexity. A blue-grey hulk of a wrecked ship lies on the horizon with two smaller brown boats beside it. Its cold tonality lends a sense of foreboding. Shipwrecks loom large in Turner’s work, reflecting the very real sense of threat faced by those who took to the sea.</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
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
22 July 2010 – 9 April 2012
2012-04-09
6 August 2010 – 9 April 2012
2012-04-09
2010-08-06
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2010-07-22
Late Turner
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
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 103
Collection based display
A Wreck, with Fishing Boats
support: 914 × 1222 mm
frame: 1125 × 1430 × 90 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>Turner creates texture here with a palette knife, applying paint in sharp flicks to suggest a frothing, rough sea. Although it is unfinished, the layers of colours Turner uses to form the sea – white, grey, blue, brown – already create a sense of depth and complexity. A blue-grey hulk of a wrecked ship lies on the horizon with two smaller brown boats beside it. Its cold tonality lends a sense of foreboding. Shipwrecks loom large in Turner’s work, reflecting the very real sense of threat faced by those who took to the sea.</p>
</div>

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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>470. </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-a-wreck-with-fishing-boats-n02425" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N02425</span></a>]<b> A Wreck, with Fishing Boats</b> <i>c.</i>
1840–5</p>
<p>THE TATE GALLERY, LONDON (2425)</p>
<p>Canvas, 36 ×48 1/8 (91·5 × 122)</p>
<p><b>Coll.</b> Turner Bequest 1856 (116, one of 36 each 4'0" × 3'0"; identified 1946 by chalk number on back); transferred to the Tate Gallery 1948.</p>
<p><b>Exh.</b> Antwerp 1953–4; Moscow and Leningrad 1960 (55); New York 1966 (30, repr. p. 51); Paris 1972 (272).</p>
<p><b>Lit.</b> Davies 1946, pp. 155, 188 n. 14; Gowing 1966, p. 38, repr. p. 51; Wilton 1979, p. 224, pl. 238.</p>
<p>In so far as one can judge one of the later of the unexhibited <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>paintings</span></a> of stormy seas, though not quite as bold as No. 471 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-rough-sea-n05479" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N05479</span></a>].</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
2004-09-23T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
boat, fishing emotions, concepts and ideas formal qualities gestural sea seascapes and coasts shipwreck society transport: water