3-017-326 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"A First-Rate Taking in Stores", from the Farnley Hall Collection of drawings by J.M.W. Turner, R.A., 1865. One of '...the admirable photographs, by Messrs. Caldesi and Co...from the collection of Turner drawings in the possession of Mr. F. H. Fawkes - the finest series of water-colour drawings by our great English landscape-painter belonging to any private gallery..."The First-Rate Taking in Stores," is...instanced by Mr. Ruskin as illustrating Turner's marvellous rapidity of execution as well as memory...It represents a section of the hull of a three-decker from stem to stern, her bows towards the spectator, with her tiers of portholes and guns, anchors and hawsers, part of her stern gallery, her chains and running and standing rigging to the lower spars all elaborately detailed, and as the whole would be seen towering...an ordinary boat; together with a couple of shore boats delivering stores, looking like toys against her huge flank; another running before the wind...The men-of-war and small craft, the sky; the sea, agitated by wind and tide, and fretting into foam against the swelling, inert, half-wet, and glistening mass of the great hull in the foreground - all seem equally studied directly from nature'. From "Illustrated London News", 1865.