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A passenger boat, its bright tan sails reflecting the sun, careens among choppy water with at least eight more sailboats and a town along the water’s edge in the distance in this horizontal landscape painting. The water closest to us is muted slate blue, and it lightens as it extends to the horizon, which comes less than a quarter of the way up this composition. We look onto the long side of the passenger boat, at nine men, women, and children huddled in two groups there, in the lower center of the composition. The people wear black, white, red, or blue, and all seem to wear hats, though they are sketchily painted. Foamy, white crests lap at the long side of the tilted boat. Several larger ships with white sails unfurled float beyond to our left. To our right, seven flags and banners fly from a three-masted ship with its sails tied up. Two rows of more than a dozen black canons each poke through doors along the side we can see. It floats upright, closer to the distant town lining the water across the right half of the picture. The buildings are painted with strokes of white paint to create loose silhouettes. Loosely painted vertical strokes suggest more boats and ships lining the harbor. A bank of cream-white and some pale gray clouds fill most of the sky, breaking to reveal blue sky only in the upper right corner of the painting.

Joseph Mallord William Turner

Rotterdam Ferry-Boat, 1833

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 57

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 92.3 x 122.5 cm (36 5/16 x 48 1/4 in.)

framed: 115.6 x 146 x 7.6 cm (45 1/2 x 57 1/2 x 3 in.)

Credit Line

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection

Accession Number

1970.17.135

Artists / Makers

Joseph Mallord William Turner (artist) British, 1775 - 1851

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Provenance

Purchased 1833 at the time of the Royal Academy of Arts (London) exhibition[1] by Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro [1795-1865], Novar, Ross and Cromarty, Scotland; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 6 April 1878, no. 101); bought by (Thos. Agnew & Sons, London), for Kirkman Daniel Hodgson, Ashgrove, Kent; by descent to Robert Kirkman Hodgson, Gavelacre, Hampshire; sold 1893 to (Thos. Agnew & Sons, London); purchased the same year by Sir Charles Clow Tennant, 1st bt. [1823-1906], The Glen, near Innerleithen, Peeblesshire, Scotland; by descent to his grandson,[2] Christopher Grey Tennant, 2nd baron Glenconner [1899-1983], The Glen; sold July 1923 to (Charles Carstairs for M. Knoedler & Co., London), from whose New York branch it was purchased November 1923 by Andrew W. Mellon, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.; gift by 1937 to his daughter, Ailsa Mellon Bruce [1901-1969], New York; bequest 1970 to NGA.

[1] The painting was number 8 in the catalogue of the exhibition.

[2] On the Tennant family see James Dugdale, "Sir Charles Tennant, the Story of a Victorian Collector," The Connoisseur, 178 (September 1971): 11.

Associated Names

Agnew & Sons, Ltd., Thomas
Bruce, Ailsa Mellon, Mrs.
Christie, Manson & Woods, Ltd.
Hodgson, Kirkman Daniel
Hodgson, Robert Kirkman
Knoedler & Company, M.
Mellon, Andrew W.
Munro, Hugh Andrew Johnstone
Tennant, Charles Clow, 1st bt., Sir
Tennant, Christopher Grey, 2nd baron Glenconner
Tennant, Edward Priaulx, 1st baron Glenconner

Exhibition History

1833: Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1833, no. 8.

1894: Works by the Old Masters, and by Deceased Masters of the British School. Winter Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1894, no. 103.

1901: Works by British Artists Deceased Since 1850. Winter Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1901, no. 82.

1924: Ten Paintings from the Tennant-Glenconner Collection, M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York, 1924, no. 9.

2003: Turner: The Late Seascapes, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown; Manchester Art Gallery; The Burrell Collection, Glasgow, 2003-2004, unnumbered catalogue, fig. 20, repro. (shown only in Williamstown).

2007: J.M.W. Turner, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Dallas Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2007-2008, no. 114, repro.

Technical Summary

The medium-weight canvas is finely plain woven; it has been lined. The ground is light gray (warm in tone on account of brown admixtures), and is smoothly applied. There is thin dark gray brushed underdrawing in the two ships to the left of the ferryboat. The painting is executed in thick opaque layers with moderate impasto. The impasto has been flattened during lining. There is scattered retouching throughout the sky and along all the edges of the painting. The natural resin varnish has discolored yellow to a moderate degree.

Bibliography

1833: Arnold's Magazine of the Fine Arts, n.s., 1 (June 1833): 187.

1833: Athenaeum 289 (11 May 1833): 297.

1833: London Literary Gazette, no. 851, 11 May 1833: 299.

1833: The Times (London), 1 July 1833.

1862: Thornbury, Walter. The Life of J.M.W. Turner, R.A.. 2 vols. London, 1862: 2:400 (2d ed., 1877).

1865: Frost, William. Revised by Henry Reeve. A Catalogue of the Paintings ... in the Collection of the late Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro, ... 6 Hamilton Place, London; with some additional paintings at Novar. London, 1865: no. 40.

1888: Redford, George. Art Sales. 2 vols. London, 1888, 1:270, 272.

1952: Cunningham, C.C. "Turner's Van Tromp Paintings." The Art Quarterly 15 (1952): 325-329.

1971: Dugdale, James. "Sir Charles Tennant: The Story of a Victorian Collector." The Connoisseur 178 (1971): 8, 12, repro.

1974: Bachrach, A.G.H. Turner and Rotterdam 1817-1825-1841. Deventer, n.d. [1974]: 20, repro. 21.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 356, repro., as Van Tromp's Shallop.

1975: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1975: no. 602. color repro.

1981: Bachrach, A.G.H. "Turner, Ruisdael and the Dutch." Turner Studies 1 (1981): 26, pl. 13.

1984: Butlin, Martin, and Evelyn Joll. The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner. 2 vols. New Haven and London, 1977. (2d. rev. ed., 1984): 1:no. 348; 2:pl. 351.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 413, no. 587, color repro., as Van Tromp's Shallop.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 407, repro.

1992: Hayes, John. British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 272-274, repro. 273.