Circa 1837
Watercolour on paper

After 1830 Turner ceased exhibiting watercolours at the Royal Academy.  But many of his works for the England and Wales, and other later, series made their first appearance in the more informal conversazione conducted by groups of appreciative collectors, sometimes staged by dealers who hoped to secure sales.  The most spectacular of Turner’s final British views was shown at one of these gatherings at the Graphic Society in 1837.  

This was a large watercolour of the ruined castle at Bamburgh Castle on the coast of Northumberland, based on a sketch Turner had recorded forty years earlier on his first northern tour . Until recently the final composition was known only to a few people, as the watercolour remained inaccessible in a private collection (it was sold at Sotheby’s on 5 December 2007 and has since then returned to the USA). Fortunately, it was possible to get some intimation of the dramatic force and imaginative power of this important watercolour from the group of four large working studies that Turner prepared when developing his basic pencil outline. The study shown here was produced towards the end of Turner’s process of planning how he would build up his image, and leaves the area of paper reserved for the castle almost blank so that warmer tones could be added once the brooding clouds, sweeping up the coast, had been realized to the artist’s satisfaction. In the finished view, the foreground is filled with churning breakers, as the sea spews forth the debris, both human and material, of a recent shipwreck, something that was a regular hazard of these treacherous waters.