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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Northern France c.1826-32 > Loose Studies of Northern France > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Château d'Arques, near Dieppe c.1826

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Château d'Arques, near Dieppe’ c.1826
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Château d'Arques, near Dieppe c.1826
D20211
Turner Bequest CCXX E
Pencil and watercolour on white wove paper, 168 x 240 mm
Blind stamped with the Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXX E’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This colour sketch of the Château d’Arques is one of several works depicting Dieppe and its environs first documented by John Ruskin. As A.J. Finberg noted in his 1909 inventory of the Turner Bequest, Ruskin grouped this work together with twenty other ‘slight coloured sketches, chiefly from Dieppe’. 1 A note which was once appended to this parcel of works reveals that Ruskin held them in low regard, judging that they had been executed ‘in some careless or sickly state of mind’. 2 More recently, the sheet has been identified as a preparatory work towards one of several abortive attempts to put the material gathered on the 1826 tour of Northern France to use in the late 1820s,3 although the subject was not fully worked up and engraved until the 1834–6 Scott’s Prose Works publication; see entry for Tate impression T04762.
1
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.686.
2
Ibid.
3
David Blayney Brown, Sarah Skinner and Ian Warrell, Coasting: Turner and Bonington on the Shores of the Channel, exhibition catalogue, Nottingham Castle 2008, p.59.
Verso:
Inscribed in pencil with the note ‘E’ in the bottom right-hand corner of the sheet.

John Chu
March 2016

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Château d'Arques, near Dieppe c.1826 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2016, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-chateau-darques-near-dieppe-r1185466, accessed 21 November 2024.