J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Kent Coast and Whaling c.1844-5 > Ideas of Folkestone Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Storm at Folkestone 1845

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Storm at Folkestone’ 1845 (Inside front cover of sketchbook)
Inside front cover of sketchbook
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Inside Front Cover:
A Storm at Folkestone 1845
D35361
Turner Bequest CCCLVI 1
Watercolour on white wove paper, 230 x 328 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘1’ bottom left
Blind stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom centre
Stamped in black ‘CCCXLVI–1’ (sic)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Depicting a section of Folkestone’s coastline in the midst of a storm, Turner has flooded the paper with dilute grey and blue wash, allowing the colours to merge into one another. A dry-brush technique has been used in the foreground, the textured result giving an impression of a choppy sea. The shadowed profile of a headland emerges to the right of the central register, its contours blurred as the wash has bled and feathered.

Alice Rylance-Watson
February 2013

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘A Storm at Folkestone 1845 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, June 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-storm-at-folkestone-r1142139, accessed 18 May 2024.