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

With the page turned vertically, there are two related views near Boulogne, as Finberg recognised,1 in the upper (outer) half. In the foreground at the top are earthworks around the Napoleonic Fort du Mont-de-Couppé, which survives off the Rue du Fort along the Channel cliffs about two miles south-west of the entrance to Boulogne’s harbour. Le Portel (apparently noted phonetically as ‘Porté’) is beyond to the south-west, with Fort de l’Heurt on offshore rocks.

Below, separated by a horizontal pencil line is a view from nearby, with Mont-de-Couppé in the foreground and the sea fort below to the right. Above is a study of the latter, now a precarious ruin, in the state seen in old photographs before the addition of a vast concrete platform during the Second World War, doubling the height of what was left by then. Perhaps from local information, Turner labelled it ‘Fort Napoleon’.2 It is likely shown in the background of Boulogne, Wreck on the Coast (Tate impressions: T05683, T05682), an 1836 engraving after Clarkson Stanfield, and appears on folios 15 recto and 19 recto (D19425, D19433), and again on 80 verso (D19537), similarly labelled ‘Fort N’ in the far distance beyond Boulogne itself. For other views in and around the city, see under folio 8 verso (D19416).

Below is a study of fishermen in soft caps and women with baskets; there are numerous annotated studies of similar figures, doubtless observed at Le Portel or Boulogne, on folio 17 recto opposite (D19429).