Watercolor, graphite and pen and black ink on medium, slightly textured, cream laid paper
Dimensions:
Sheet: 13 3/4 x 35 1/8 inches (34.9 x 89.2 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund, in honor of John Baskett
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B2009.5.3
Gallery Label:
This drawing can be identified as the preparatory sketch for a painting, A Wood Yard on the Thames at Nine Elms served as the basis for A Sunset, with a View of Nine Elms (Tate). The south bank of the Thames in the eighteenth century was lined with industries, including the timber yards on the stretch of bank facing Westminster. The yard at Nine Elms is farther upriver, just west of Vauxhall, and looks toward Battersea. Scott records the different types of wood in the yard, from a great trunk to sawn planks; the kiln visible over the roofs of the shed may have been for drying wood. In addition to the meticulous attention Scott pays to the yard itself, he appears to have used this working sheet to record passing small vessels, without particular attention to their scale or placement on the fictitious surface of the water. Gallery label for Spreading Canvas - Eighteenth-Century British Marine Painting (Yale Center for British Art, 2016-09-09 - 2016-12-04)
