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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and French ... > Holland, Meuse and Cologne Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Dover Castle to the North-East from the Beach West of the Harbour, with the Southern Pier and Cliffs towards the South Foreland 1825

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Dover Castle to the North-East from the Beach West of the Harbour, with the Southern Pier and Cliffs towards the South Foreland’ 1825
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 3 Verso:
Dover Castle to the North-East from the Beach West of the Harbour, with the Southern Pier and Cliffs towards the South Foreland 1825
D19406
Turner Bequest CCXV 3a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The view continues to the right on folio 4 recto opposite (D19407), where Dover Castle1 is seen to the north-east beyond the harbour. The present section of the view is limited to cottages above the beach south-west of the harbour entrance, with boats are drawn up here and there. Later developments mean that nothing of what Turner shows above the beach survives.
Unusually, there is selective shading suggesting both the dark tones of parts of the buildings and strong morning light from the right; diagonal hatching is used more systematically opposite, to convey the forms of the castle and terrain. That page also includes part of the harbour channel’s southern pier in the foreground, and its seaward end is shown in a further continuation on folio 5 recto (D19409), with cliffs towards the South Foreland beyond.
See also a view west towards Shakespeare Cliff, looking to the left from about the same point, on folio 4 verso (D19408), with what may be the same boats and buildings from a different angle. Those on the right of the present page appear again in an overall view corresponding with it, D19407 and D19409 in the contemporary Holland sketchbook (Tate D19346; Turner Bequest CCXIV 255). For other Dover views in this sketchbook and elsewhere, see under folio 1 recto (D19401).

Matthew Imms
September 2020

1
See Finberg 1909, II, p.662.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Dover Castle to the North-East from the Beach West of the Harbour, with the Southern Pier and Cliffs towards the South Foreland 1825 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2020, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2023, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-dover-castle-to-the-north-east-from-the-beach-west-of-the-r1202761, accessed 20 May 2024.