Turner's painful memory displayed for first time

J M W Turner was not just known as a prodigious water-colourist and landscape painter in his lifetime. He was also famed among his nearest and dearest as a bit of a miser.

But now a sketch is going on sale that tells a very different story of the artist: one of close friendship, warmth and generosity. Figures by a fishing boat hauled up on the beach at Brighton was given away by the artist. Now it is priced at £95,000.

The friend who received the sketch as a gift was astonished when Turner handed over the image. Years later, it transpired that the portrayal of the fishing boat on Brighton beach in Turner's sketchbook reminded the artist of the death of his closest friend and that he could not bear to keep it.

Figures by a fishing boat is believed to date from 1824, when Turner made a series of preparatory studies in the southern coastal town.

The work went on sale at Agnew's Gallery in Old Bond Street, London, yesterday, when an exhibition opened entitled Master Drawings, which includes the sketch and many others which have never before been viewed by the public. The work will be exhibited until 6 July.

Turner took the sketchbook, complete with his Brighton sketches, to Yorkshire in the autumn of 1824 to make some local studies while visiting his closest friend, Walter Fawkes, near Otley, North Yorkshire.

But it was to be the artist's last visit to Fawkes, a landowner and MP who had built up a large collection of Turner's work. Fawkes died some months later, in 1825, and the half-filled sketchbook was put to one side by a grief-stricken Turner.

The death was so painful that the painter never again returned to Farnley Hall, where Fawkes had lived.

The sketchbook was abandoned until 1836, when Turner's housekeeper noticed it as she was packing his luggage for a European tour that he was to take with his friend, Hugh Munro. She saw that the sketchbook was only half full and decided to pack it for the trip, unaware of the traumatic memories it carried for the artist.

It was Munro who came across the pad during their journey, and he later noted: "When I travelled in 1836 with Turner through France, Switzerland and the Val d'Aosta [in Italy], I found this sketchbook amongst my things - I showed it to Turner, who, after looking over it, again put it into my hands - I suppose it had been originally put up to enable him to make use of the unused paper in it." It was an uncharacteristic gesture by Turner, who did not have a reputation for generosity.

Munro, who died in 1865, did not fully understand the reason for Turner's generosity and the story behind the sketchbook was not discovered until the 20th century, during research by the Turner scholar A J Finberg.

Gabriel Naughton, the director of Agnew's art dealers, said the quality of the sketch was "exceptional" because it had remained in an album and was not exposed to the light. "It is in exceptionally good condition. It's part of the sketchbook given to his friend. It is a touching story because Turner rarely gave things away," she said.

The Romantic landscape painter, who was born in Cambridge in 1775, travelled widely and produced thousands of sketches. As he grew older, he became more eccentric and had few close friends, except for his father, who lived with him for 30 years, eventually working as his studio assistant. His father's death in 1829 had a profound effect on him, and he suffered from bouts of depression until his death in 1851.