Oil paint on canvas
Kent
Tate Collection
Works with images
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>
Waves Breaking on a Lee Shore at Margate Rockets and Blue Lights
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
architecture
beach
cloud
England
England, South East
England, Southern
harbour
Kent
lighthouse
Margate - non-specific
places
public and municipal
sea
seascapes and coasts
storm
townscape, distant
townscapes / man-made features
UK cities, towns and villages
UK counties
UK countries and regions
wave
weather
wind
<p>In the 1830s and 1840s Turner made dozens of watercolours and oil paintings based on close observation of the sea from the shore. He developed some of these sketches into exhibited pictures. Others were used as studies for larger paintings or left unfinished. He used a palette of cool greys, blues and greens, enlivened by a thick application of white to evoke the spray of the crashing waves.</p><p><em>Gallery label, July 2020</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
22 July 2002 – 21 May 2007
2007-05-21
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2002-07-22
Finished or Unfinished
Collection based display
1 October 2007 – 21 September 2008
2008-09-21
1 October 2007 – 6 January 2008
2008-01-06
2007-10-01
National Gallery of Art (Washington DC, USA)
10 February 2008 – 18 May 2008
2008-05-18
2008-02-10
Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas, USA)
http://www.DallasMuseumofArt.org
23 June 2008 – 21 September 2008
2008-09-21
2008-06-23
Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, USA)
http://www.metmuseum.org
2007-10-01
JMW Turner
Tate partnerships & programmes
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
8 February 2013 – 13 April 2014
2014-04-13
8 February 2013 – 19 May 2013
2013-05-19
2013-02-08
Art Gallery of South Australia (Adelaide, Australia)
http://www.artgallery.sa.gov.au
4 June 2013 – 8 September 2013
2013-09-08
2013-06-04
National Gallery of Australia (Canberra, Australia)
8 October 2013 – 18 December 2013
2013-12-18
2013-10-08
Toyko Metropolitan Art Museum (Toyko, Japan)
1 January 2014 – 13 April 2014
2014-04-13
2014-01-01
Kobe City Museum (Kobe, Japan)
2013-02-08
J.M.W. Turner: Makings of a Master
Loan-out
10 September 2014 – 20 September 2015
2015-09-20
10 September 2014 – 25 January 2015
2015-01-25
2014-09-10
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
24 February 2015 – 24 May 2015
2015-05-24
2015-02-24
J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles, USA)
20 June 2015 – 20 September 2015
2015-09-20
2015-06-20
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young Museum (San Francisco, USA)
http://www.famsf.org
2014-09-10
Late Turner: Painting Set Free
Exhibition
24 February 2015 – 31 January 2016
2016-01-31
24 February 2015 – 24 May 2015
2015-05-24
2015-02-24
J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles, USA)
20 June 2015 – 20 September 2015
2015-09-20
2015-06-20
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young Museum
31 October 2015 – 31 January 2016
2016-01-31
2015-10-31
Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, Canada)
http://www.ago.net
2015-02-24
Late Turner
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
1 January 2025 – 31 January 2028
2028-01-31
1 January 2025 – 31 January 2028
2028-01-31
2025-01-01
Turner Contemporary (Margate, UK)
2025-01-01
JMW Turner
Loan-out
Waves Breaking on a Lee Shore at Margate (Study for ‘Rockets and Blue Lights’)
support: 597 × 952 mm
frame: 884 × 1187 × 110 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 the 1830s and 1840s Turner made dozens of watercolours and oil paintings based on close observation of the sea from the shore. He developed some of these sketches into exhibited pictures. Others were used as studies for larger paintings or left unfinished. He used a palette of cool greys, blues and greens, enlivened by a thick application of white to evoke the spray of the crashing waves.  </p>
</div>

Display caption
2020-07-01T00:00:00
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>458. </b>[<span>N02882</span>]<b> Waves Breaking on a Lee Shore</b> <i>c.</i> 1835</p>
<p>THE TATE GALLERY, LONDON (2882)</p>
<p>Canvas, 23 1/2 × 37 1/2 (60 × 95)</p>
<p><b>Coll.</b> Turner Bequest 1856; transferred to the Tate Gallery 1919.</p>
<p><b>Exh.</b> Liverpool 1933 (65); Cardiff 1951; Rotterdam 1955 (57); <i>English Landscape Painters</i> Phoenix Art Museum, December 1961–January 1962 (27); <i>Man and his World</i> Expo 67, Montreal, April–October 1967 (85, repr. in colour); Prague, Bratislava (147, repr.) and Vienna (56, repr.) 1969; Tokyo and Kyoto 1970–71 (43, repr. in colour); Dresden (12, repr.) and Berlin (20) 1972; Lisbon 1973 (15, repr. in colour); Milan 1975 (153, repr.); Leningrad and Moscow 1975–6 (61, repr.); Hamburg 1976 (127 repr. and colour pl. 20).</p>
<p><b>Lit.</b> Clark 1973, p. 107, pl. 84a; Herrmann 1975, p. 43, colour pl. 145.</p>
<p>Companion to No. 457 [<span>N02881</span>] and probably painted in the mid 1830s. The motive of waves breaking on a shore with a central burst of spray was one that Turner had already used in a wash <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>drawing</span></a> from the ‘Studies for the Liber’ sketchbook (not <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/e/engraving" title="Glossary definition for 'Engraving'"><span>engraved</span></a>; CXV-7, repr. exh. cat., B.M. 1975, p. 42 no. 40, and Wilkinson 1974, p. 100 in colour); the sketchbook is watermarked 1807 but at least one of the designs from it is for the unpublished plate of ‘Ploughing, Eton’ which presumably dates from nearer 1819 when the publication of the <i>Liber Studiorum</i> was abandoned.</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
architecture beach cloud England England, South East England, Southern harbour Kent lighthouse Margate - non-specific places public and municipal sea seascapes and coasts storm townscape, distant townscapes / man-made features UK cities, towns and villages UK counties UK countries and regions wave weather wind