JMW Turner's Sketches of Sailors and Marines: 1805

JMW Turner; The ‘Victory’: Starboard Side
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1805

Continuing my three-part series on JMW Turner's paintings of the Battle of Trafalgar, today we look at some of Turner's sketches. In 1805 Turner made a special trip to sketch the Victory as she entered the Medway, and subsequently made a large number of detailed studies and watercolor studies onboard the ship, as well as studies of officers, sailors, and marines of Victory and Temeraire. These sketches, now entitled the "Nelson sketchbook" (and available to view online at The Tate), subsequently became the basis for his 1806 painting of The Battle of Trafalgar, which I looked at last week. These sketches from life let us see how Turner interpreted what he was seeing, without the intervening artifice of his studio.



JMW Turner; Sailors and Marines
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1805

These men are identified by the catalog record as two sailors on the left and three marines on the right. Taking the catalog at its word, the two men identified as sailors have long hair tied back into thick queues that end mid-back.

The catalog identifies them as wearing striped waistcoats, though they may also be wearing striped shirts or the machine-knit over-garment called a Guernsey frock. The stripes on the right arm of the top left sailor may be showing the pleating of his sleeve. The sailor in the middle of the drawing is identified as a marine, but dresses almost identically to the sailors in a round hat, waistcoat, and loose trousers.

JMW Turner; Marines, a Seaman and a Separate Sketch of a Man’s Face
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1805

The men in this painting are more clearly marines. The man who is clearly a sailor has a long, thick queue that falls to the small of his back and a round hat with a broad, slightly conical crown and broad brim - perhaps a straw hat. 

After looking at these sketches it's clear that the sailors, their queues, and their hats look remarkably similar to the sailors that appear in Turner's final painting:

Detail from JMW Turner's The Battle of Trafalgar... 
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported), 
The original can be at the Tate viewed by clicking here.