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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Folkestone and the Medway c.1821-2 > Folkestone Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Cliffs near Folkestone c.1821-2

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Cliffs near Folkestone’ c.1821-2
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 14 Verso:
Cliffs near Folkestone c.1821–2
D17230
Turner Bequest CXCVIII 14a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 187 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This simple pencil outline of cliffs looks across to Folkestone, as observed by Finberg.1 The shaded silhouette of a tall building on the right is likely to represent Folkestone’s main parish Church of St Mary and St Eanswythe, which features in many of Turner’s studies of the area.
There are further, more definitive, studies of the church elsewhere in this sketchbook, and several tenuous ones as well. For a list of these, as well as an indication of Turner’s renderings of the church elsewhere in his oeuvre, see the entry for folio 17 verso (D17235).
At the top of the page are two, simple, curved lines. These meet, intersecting slightly, in a way that suggests a hilly prospect, although there are no distinguishing features from which to hang a topographical reading of the brief doodle.

Maud Whatley
January 2016

1
Finberg 1909, I, p.604.

How to cite

Maud Whatley, ‘Cliffs near Folkestone c.1821–2 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2016, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, February 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-cliffs-near-folkestone-r1184504, accessed 22 November 2024.