This pencil work belongs to a series of collaborative drawings that J.M.W. Turner and his friend and rival Thomas Girtin produced in the mid-1790s for Dr Thomas Monro. A specialist in mental illness, Monro was Principal Physician of the Bethlem Royal Hospital and attended King George III. He was also an important art collector and patron. On Friday evenings during the winter, he invited young artists to his home in Adelphi Terrace, London, to make copies from his extensive collection of drawings and watercolours. Monro retained the copies and paid the artists for their work. Turner and Girtin were both members of the ‘Monro Circle’, as this group of artists became known.

As noted in Joseph Farington’s diary on 1 December 1795, Monro borrowed ‘a Portfolio of outlines of Shipping and boats, made at Dover’ from his neighbour, the amateur artist and collector John Henderson. These outlines were Henderson’s own work, though he is known to have sometimes copied outlines from Turner. Monro tasked Turner and Girtin with copying Henderson’s outlines. There is also evidence Henderson himself sometimes copied outlines that Turner drawn, demonstrating how artists in Monro’s circle of acquaintance learnt from and fed off one another.

Turner purchased several of the Dover outlines, including this one, at the sale of Monro’s collection in 1833. This drawing was later owned by a descendant of the artist’s uncle, Miss M. H. Turner, who presented it to the National Maritime Museum in 1944. She also presented items to the Tate Gallery (Claudian Landscape N05566), the National Portrait Gallery, British Museum and Hastings Corporation.

Other drawings by Turner and Girtin from the Dover series are included in the Turner Bequest in the Tate collection (Tate D36616–D36624). Several of Henderson’s original outlines were part of the collection that his son bequeathed to the British Museum in 1878 (British Museum 1878,1228.165–7).