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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Autumn Tour of Northern France 1845 > Dieppe and Kent Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Locomotive on the Foord Viaduct, Folkestone 1845

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Locomotive on the Foord Viaduct, Folkestone’ 1845
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 6 Recto:
A Locomotive on the Foord Viaduct, Folkestone 1845
D35497
Turner Bequest CCCLXI 6
Pencil on white wove paper, 86 x 111 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘6’ top left, upside down
Stamped in black ‘CCCLXI – 6’ top left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, the subject is the recently constructed viaduct at Foord, carrying the railway not far north-west of Folkestone’s harbour; Ian Warrell has noted ‘a locomotive, puffing steam, about to cross’.1 There are watercolour studies of the viaduct in the contemporary Ideas of Folkestone sketchbook (Tate D35371–D35373; Turner Bequest CCCLVI 11, 12, 13); see under the first of these for its construction in 1844. Folio 14 verso of the present book (D35512) may show the structure in the distance.
David Blayney Brown has noted that Finberg’s comparison of motifs in this sketchbook (see also folio 2 verso; D35490) with watercolour studies in the contemporary Ideas of Folkestone sketchbook (in this case D35373)2 ‘need not be coincidental, for Turner was still thinking pictorially, and gathering information for a purpose.’3
1
Warrell 2014, p.222.
2
See Finberg 1909, II, p.1171.
3
Brown 1987, p.14.
Technical notes:
There is some brown staining at the edge and at the gutter, possibly indicating water damage in the 1928 Tate flood.

Matthew Imms
September 2016

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Locomotive on the Foord Viaduct, Folkestone 1845 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2016, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-locomotive-on-the-foord-viaduct-folkestone-r1183922, accessed 22 November 2024.