Scarborough town and castle: morning: boys catching crabs
Britain
1775 – 1851
Scarborough town and castle: morning: boys catching crabs
c.1810
watercolour on paper
- Place made
- London
- Medium
- watercolour on paper
- Dimensions
- 68.5 x 101.5 cm (sheet)
- Credit line
- Gift from the collection of the late Mrs S.M. Crabtree by her children Rosalind, Robert, Richard and John assisted by the Roy and Marjory Edwards Bequest Fund and the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation to commemorate the Gallery's 125th anniversary 2006
- Accession number
- 20062P10
- Signature and date
- Not signed. Not dated.
- Provenance
- Walter Ramsden Fawkes of Farnley Hall, Yorkshire c.1811; estate sale of Walter Fawkes, Christie's, London, 2 July 1937; Sir Frederick Hamilton; by descent to Lady Hamilton 1956; Mrs William Crabtree 1968; on long-term loan to AGSA from 1987 to 2006.
- Media category
- Watercolour
- Collection area
- British paintings
- Image credit
- Photo: Saul Steed
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Joseph Mallord William Turner’s rise in the British art world was nothing less than meteoric. Accepted as a student to the Royal Academy Schools at the age of fourteen, he was elected an Associate at the age of twenty-four, becoming a full Academician just three years later. Turner worked in both oil and watercolour throughout his life, but it was through watercolour that his extraordinary ability to capture nuanced colour and light is showcased; it is these works that continue to capture the public’s imagination and which have ultimately come to define the age of romanticism in Britain.
Scarborough was a popular seaside destination in early nineteenth-century England and Turner’s depiction of boys playing in the sand at low tide offers an idyllic version of English rural life. Turner, like other artists of the romantic era, was not seeking to capture a singular moment in time; rather, an everyday experience. While the foreground represents the triviality of everyday life, the crumbling medieval castle and Roman ruins in the background place this story within a much broader human continuum, suggesting a more expansive and profound representation of humanity.
Tansy Curtin, Curator, International Art pre-1980
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Making Nature: Masters of European Landscape Art
Art Gallery of South Australia, 26 June 2009 – 6 September 2009
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[Book] AGSA 500.