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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Meuse-Mosel, Luxembourg and Northern ... > Rivers Meuse and Moselle Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Gateways and Fortifications at Calais 1824

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Gateways and Fortifications at Calais’ 1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 14 Recto:
Gateways and Fortifications at Calais 1824
D19578
Turner Bequest CCXVI 14
Pencil on white wove paper, 78 x 118 mm
Inscribed in blue ink by Ruskin ‘14’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CCXVI–14’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Calais has been crucial to both France and Britain’s network of trade and defences since the medieval period and it is guarded by a series of fortifications, bastions, watchtowers and gateways. Here, Turner has roughly sketched a few of these structures, including what resembles the Porte du Havre at top right: a gate made famous for its appearance in Hogarth’s celebrated painting O the Roast Beef of Old England (‘The Gate of Calais’) (Tate N01464 and Tate impression T03918). See also Tate D19924; Turner Bequest CCXVI 187, for some diminutive sketches of Calais’s fortifications taken from a distance.
The building at top left includes a staff to raise a flag which appears on the folio opposite (Tate D19577; Turner Bequest CCXVI 13 a).

Alice Rylance-Watson
February 2014

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Gateways and Fortifications at Calais 1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-gateways-and-fortifications-at-calais-r1174366, accessed 20 May 2024.