Joseph Mallord William Turner, R.A.

Probably Sophia Caroline Booth (1798-1875);
John Ruskin (1819-1900);
probably his sale, 15 April 1869, lot 21 ‘Surf on a beach, Margate’;
Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908);
Ray Murphy (1923-1953), May 1950;
his sale, 19 November 1985, lot 114;
with Agnew’s, London;
Private collection, U.S.A.  

Yale, University Art Gallery, Prospects, 1950, no. 25

Agnew's 1982-1992, p.164, pl. 149, as 'Margate Beach'

In this plein-air watercolour, which is full of energy and vibrancy, Turner has captured a stormy day on the beach. While black and grey clouds scud across the open sky, below the sea froths and boils in the stiff breeze. To the left, Turner suggests a wooden pier and to the right, three wading figures are implied with rapidly executed brushstrokes.

This watercolour almost certainly depicts the beach at Margate and dates to the late 1830s. Turner had a great affection for the fashionable seaside town. He first visited it at the age of eleven and later on in his life, particularly during the 1830s and 1840s, he regularly used it as a retreat from the chaos of London. While there, he lodged with Sophia Caroline Booth who ran a boarding house on the sea front. The pair became very close and in 1846 Turner invited her to live with him in London, where she carried out the duties of devoted housekeeper.

This work relates to the group of rapidly executed watercolours that largely depict marine or shore subjects and which are listed in Andrew Wilton’s catalogue raisonné as numbers 1382–1397.¹ Although it has previously been suggested that this group came from a single sketchbook, recent research by the paper historian, Peter Bower, has cast doubt on this. John Ruskin owned many of these sheets and the Turner scholar, Ian Warrell, has suggested that the present work may have been sold, as lot 21, in Ruskin's sale at Christie’s, London on the 15^th April 1869.

When the young collector, Ray Livingstone Murphy, acquired the work just over eighty years later (in May 1950), he proudly wrote to Paul Oppé saying that ‘by the greatest good fortune I acquired a Turner beach [scene] which is the extreme simplicity of its treatment and in composition… it… possesses a rather interesting history as it was originally in the possession of Charles Eliot Norton, the friend of Ruskin.’² We would like to thank Ian Warrell and Peter Bower for their help when cataloguing this work.

<sup>1. A. Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, pp. 466, nos. 1382-1897
2. Ray Livingstone Murphy Sale Catalogue, Christie’s, London, 19 November 1985, p. 87</sup>