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

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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 5 Recto:
Dover Castle to the North-East from the Beach West of the Harbour, with the Southern Pier and Cliffs towards the South Foreland 1825
D19409
Turner Bequest CCXV 5
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 189 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘w’ towards bottom left, on turret
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘5’ top right, and ‘277’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXV – 5’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The cliffs east of Dover1 recede towards the South Foreland in the distance, beyond the end of the lost southern pier at the entrance to Dover Harbour. The page is effectively a direct continuation from folios 3 verso-4 recto (D19406–D19407); Turner perhaps temporarily pulled back the right-hand edge of the latter into the gutter here, in order to align the pier and cliffs precisely. The flagpole and mast on the turret at the end of the ramshackle pier, demolished in 1827 and replaced,2 are shown from a different angle in the contemporary Holland sketchbook (Tate D19348; Turner Bequest CCXIV 256).
The overall three-page view corresponds with Tate D19346 (Turner Bequest CCXIV 255) in the Holland book. 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.
2
See ‘Exploring Kent’s Past: Monument Details’, Kent County Council, accessed 3 August 2020, https://webapps.kent.gov.uk/KCC.ExploringKentsPast.Web.Sites.Public/SingleResult.aspx?uid=MWX43948.

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-r1202764, accessed 20 May 2024.