Scarborough town and castle: morning: boys catching crabs

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