Oil on board
Tate Collection
Works with images
Joseph Mallord William Turner
Turner Bequest
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>
Riders on a Beach
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
adults
agriculture, gardening & fishing
animals: mammals
beach
cloud
figure
float
horse
objects
people
riding
sea
seascapes and coasts
society
transport: land
wave
weather
<p>This is from a series of oil sketches that Turner made on millboard. The series was painted late in his career. Although small boards like this one were often used by artists working directly from nature, Turner made most of his oil sketches in his studio. He worked either from pencil sketches or from memory. These works reveal how Turner used oil paint to sketch out details of land, sea and sky. In the examples shown here he also included figures within the landscape.</p><p><em>Gallery label, September 2018</em></p>
paper unique oil board
20 March 2009 – 10 August 2009
2009-08-10
20 March 2009 – 10 August 2009
2009-08-10
2009-03-20
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2009-03-20
The Theatre of Colour: Turner Watercolours at the Museum of Modern Art, New York 1966
Collection based display
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/
2014-09-10
Late Turner: Painting Set Free
Exhibition
11 July 2016 – 15 March 2020
2020-03-15
11 July 2016 – 15 March 2020
2020-03-15
2016-07-11
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2016-07-11
Clore 103 In the Studio
Collection based display
Riders on a Beach
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
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<p>This is from a series of oil sketches that Turner made on millboard. The series was painted late in his career. Although small boards like this one were often used by artists working directly from nature, Turner made most of his oil sketches in his studio. He worked either from pencil sketches or from memory. These works reveal how Turner used oil paint to sketch out details of land, sea and sky. In the examples shown here he also included figures within the landscape.</p>
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2018-09-05T00:00:00
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>485. </b>[<span>D36675</span>]<b> Riders on a Beach</b> <i>c.</i> 1835</p>
<p>THE BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON (1972. U. 745)</p>
<p>Millboard, 9 × 12 (23 × 30·5)</p>
<p><b>Coll.</b> Turner Bequest 1856.</p>
<p><b>Exh.</b> Tokyo and Osaka (repr.) and Hong Kong 1973–4 (9).</p>
<p>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> and No. 486 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-shore-scene-with-waves-and-breakwater-d36680" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>D36680</span></a>] are from the parcel of oils on millboard found unnumbered among the works from the Turner Bequest transferred from the Tate Gallery to the British Museum in 1931, but differ from the fourteen other sketches from that parcel, Nos. 487–500, in being executed on a smoother, thicker type of millboard. In this way they resemble <i>A Sailing Boat off Deal</i> (No. 484), which is also of the same size, and they presumably date from the same time, though perhaps slightly earlier than the <i>c.</i> 1835 proposed by Evelyn Joll.</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
2004-09-22T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
adults agriculture, gardening & fishing animals: mammals beach cloud figure float horse objects people riding sea seascapes and coasts society transport: land wave weather
M 1972 U745