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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Ports of England c.1822-8 > 'Ports of England' Studies > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Headland on Coast c.1822-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Headland on Coast’ c.1822-8
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Headland on Coast c.1822–8
D25322
Turner Bequest CCLXIII 200
Watercolour on paper, 278 x 381 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘200’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXIII–200’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This drawing may be a distant view of Margate according to Eric Shanes, although the absence of any identifying features makes it difficult to determine Turner’s exact representation.1
Turner has saturated the sheet with translucent layers of green-grey and blue wash, marking out a headland in very pale red. The pigments have merged and bled into each other forming evocative gradients. The foreground is rendered with vigorous dry brush-strokes of the same green-grey wash heightened with brown to suggest the churn and swell of the sea.
1
Shanes 1997, p.99 Appendix I ‘Margate’.
Technical notes:
There is pronounced cockling on the back of the sheet. The paper has browned quite considerably in the indentations produced by the cockling.
Verso:
Inscribed in pencil ‘CCLXIII– 120’ at top left.

Alice Rylance-Watson
March 2013

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Headland on Coast c.1822–8 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-headland-on-coast-r1148222, accessed 20 May 2024.