JMW Turner, Waves Breaking on a Lee Shore at Margate (Study for 'Rockets and Blue Lights') c.1840. Image courtesy of Tate
Turner 250: Breaking Waves
This spring, turner Contemporary will present present JMW Turner’s oil sketch 'Waves Breaking on a Lee Shore at Margate (Study for ‘Rockets and Blue Lights’)' as part of Turner 250, a year-long festival celebrating 250 years since the birth of JMW Turner.
JMW Turner (1775–1851) is considered the most influential British artist of all time. Born in London, he developed a deep connection to the sea during childhood visits to Margate, where he attended school. From the 1820s, he returned often, travelling by steamer and staying with Sophia Booth, his companion.
Turner embraced modernity, redefining landscape painting during his extensive travels in Britain and Europe. He found inspiration in Margate’s skies, calling them ‘the loveliest in all Europe.’ The view from Mrs Booth’s house, near this gallery’s location, inspired many of his sea studies.
Waves Breaking On a Lee Shore is likely to have been painted partly in Margate. It captures the force of the sea during a violent storm, experienced from the safety of the beach. The viewpoint looks east towards the Stone Pier and lighthouse, both visible on the left, while a plume of dark smoke towards the right of the canvas suggests an unseen vessel.
The painting evolved from a burst of sketching at a time when Turner was experimenting with different media and formats, such as the wide landscape format used here. The same year, Turner painted a famous, full-size picture from this sketch. Rockets and Blue Lights (The Clark Museum, Massachusetts) shows the steamers’ difficulty approaching Margate harbour in heavy seas.
This picture is interesting both in itself as an incomplete private meditation on the motion of the sea, and also for how it informed the decisions Turner made in developing Rockets and Blue Lights….
Looking across the surface of the painting you can sense how it is built on a structure of distinct zones of colour: yellow and blue for the sky, and a neutral grey foreground, with further layers of earthy brown. All the significant details are worked up in a thickened form of paint known as ‘impasto’, which would possibly have had more body and been even more noticeably textured before the picture was cleaned and ‘restored’ in the early twentieth century.
Ian Warrell
Curator, writer and Turner expert
During Turner’s life, Waves Breaking On a Lee Shore was never displayed publicly. Oil sketches were a common practice among artists of Turner’s time, serving as a means for them to try out ideas and techniques for their larger, exhibited canvases. These sketches remained in Turner’s London studio until they joined the national collections in 1856.
*A lee shore is a coastline towards which the wind blows, posing danger to boats.