A Ship Aground, Yarmouth; Sample Study

In 1827 and 1828 Turner was at work on four long landscapes for the Earl of Egremont, made to fit under the panelling of the Carved Room at Petworth House in Sussex. He painted full-size trial canvases first, the same shape and the same degree of finish, so his patron could see what he would be getting. This is one of them, and the subject is a ship run aground on the Norfolk coast at Yarmouth. Tate's reading is that it was offered to the earl as one more option and turned down. Turner did not waste the composition. He worked it up again as a French frigate stranded at low tide, Fort Vimieux, and exhibited that in 1831. The rejected canvas stayed in his studio and came to the nation with everything else in it in 1856.