Marine Dabblers, 1808 and 1811

Today we return to the marine art of JMW Turner in the collection of the Tate with scene from the first decade of the 19th century, done first as a watercolor in 1808 and later issued as a engraving in 1811. In the foreground young boys play in the surf next to a boat run up on the shore, contrasted to the adult fishermen in the background. To quote the Tate's catalog entry, "The anxiety of the child at the loss of a toy in the shallows foreshadows the dangers of setting out in real boats, to which the men shown in the background are accustomed".

I've avoided featuring images of watermen or coastal fishermen because there are sartorial differences between them and bluewater sailors, but the lure of Turner was once again too much for me: not only does the Tate have Turner's original watercolor, but both the preliminary outline etching and the final published version of this print survive, with the final, published print engraved by a different artist.

Together these three images show subtle differences in the interpretation of the sailor's clothing in the scene, and a useful lesson on the over-reliance on an artist's brush-strokes or etching-lines when studying clothing.

JMW Turner; Marine Dabblers
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1808

This is Turner's original watercolor, completed in 1808. The sketch was done in Indian Red pigment as a series of washes, with some washing-out used for the figures. The four boys play in the surf at the foreground, and off to the right are the two adults that grabbed my interest.

Detail from JMW Turner's "Marine Dabblers"
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1808

It's a little difficult to tell what the men are wearing because of the nature of the washes; the figure on the left standing in the surf half-turned to the viewer appears to be wearing a striped knit cap, a light-colored shirt with full sleeves, petticoat breeches, and a bulk leg covering that look like trousers. The figure on the right, with his back pushed up against the boat, wears a cap, white shirt, light-colored waistcoat, and slops over some sort of leg covering.

JMW Turner; Marine Dabblers
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1811

Next I turn to Turner's preliminary etching, which offers more clarity in the sharp lines of an etched plate but less detail in terms of shading and some of the garments, but the leg-coverings of the men now look like gaiters worn over breeches.

Detail from JMW Turner's "Marine Dabblers"
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1811

Finally I turn to the published engraving, which was engraved by another artist, William Say. This bears much more similarity to the original watercolor due to its shading, but even more detail in the sailor's clothes.

JMW Turner; Marine Dabblers
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1811

Detail from JMW Turner's "Marine Dabblers"
© Tate Photographic Rights © Tate (2016), CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported),
The original can be viewed at the Tate by clicking here.
1811

Both knit caps look striped, and the sailor on the left's petticoat breeches look horizontally striped. The detail of the gaiters over the breeches is largely lost.

Although this post is perhaps not extremely interesting from the perspective of the costume historian, I nonetheless enjoyed seeing Turner's artistic process, especially when the process gives me insight into studying sailor's clothing in art.

Sailors on horseback, 1811

Continuing our trend of caricatures of sailors having misadventures on horses, today's image from 1811 (one an undated reissue) shows three sailors mounted on horseback racing along. A fourth sailor on the ground has lost his mount - clearly an end the sailor who has been lashed to his mount with "stout cables" is trying to prevent. The whole scene suggests that no possible good can come of this.


I'm showing both of the Walpole's colorations of this print, which both have striped trousers, red and blue jackets, and round hats with cockades. Some of the sailors wear clothes that look more civilian than others, though which sailors are painted as such changes between the prints, and the sailorly nature of all of them is revealed by their jargon-ridden dialogue: the man on the ground cries "Mind what you are at Messmates for I am upset. [A]nd the Frigate I came on board of has been underweigh [sic] without me this half hour". As always, click on the link to the Walpole to view the print at the Walpole, where you can zoom in on the high-resolution image.

"Sailors on Horseback".  GM Woodward, London, c. 1811.
Link to original at full size: The Lewis Walpole Library.





This first colorization shows two sailors in striped trousers (one blue, one red), with the remaining two in blue and a color that could be buff or brown. Two are wearing the usual blue jackets and two are wearing red, a less common color for colorists to use for sailor jackets, but the shapes of their jackets and the details of the cuff remain the same. All four have black round hats, and one has a rosette in his that looks more like a cockade. The sailor on the ground has a loosely-tied handkerchief around his neck colored yellow, and two of the other sailors look to have white neckwear. The two sailors with visible shoes wear white socks and round-toed buckled shoes with large buckles painted as white. All sailors have short, curly brown hair, and the ones shown in profile have distinct sideburns that reach down to their earlobes.

"Sailors on Horseback". Thomas Rowlandson, London, 1811.
Link to original at full size: The Lewis Walpole Library.

The second colorization shows some nice variation: the sailor to the far right looks nothing like a sailor in his light blue trousers, brown coat, and pinkish-red waistcoat that matches the unhorsed sailor's handkerchief. Two sailors have white trousers and blue jackets, and the remaining one has striped blue trousers and a red jacket.