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 Dover Castle from below the Cliffs 1845

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Dover Castle from below the Cliffs’ 1845
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 20 Verso:
Dover Castle from below the Cliffs 1845
D35523
Turner Bequest CCCLXI 20a
Pencil on white wove paper, 86 x 111 mm
Partial watermark ‘W K | 1’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?Quarry Sand]’ towards bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Looking north, this rapid sketch shows Dover Castle in its imposing cliff-top situation overlooking the Channel, and continues on folio 21 recto opposite (D35524) where the place name is inscribed. The subject was long familiar to Turner; see the 1793 Dover views in the ‘London and Home Counties 1793–5’ section of this catalogue, and among later works compare for example the 1822 watercolour Dover Castle from the Sea (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).1
The castle also appears in the mid-1820s watercolours Dover from Shakespeare’s Cliff (private collection),2 engraved in 1826 for the Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England (Tate impressions: T04424, T05246–T05251, T06000), Dover (D18154; Turner Bequest CCVIII U),3 engraved in 1827 for the Ports of England (Tate impressions: T04828, T04829) and Straits of Dover (currently untraced),4 engraved in 1828 for the Picturesque Views in England and Wales (no Tate impression); see Alice Rylance-Watson’s entry for D18154 for details of Dover drawings in other sketchbooks.
There are further views towards the back of the present book, on folios 84 verso, 85 recto, 85 verso, 92 verso–93 recto, 93 verso–94 recto and 94 verso (D35637–D35639, D35653–D35657). The slighter sketches on folios 100 recto and verso and 101 recto (D35667–D35669) are also tentatively identifiable.

Matthew Imms
September 2016

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.357 no.505, reproduced.
2
Ibid., p.355 no.483, reproduced.
3
Ibid., p.387 no.753, reproduced.
4
Ibid., p.393 no.797.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Dover Castle from below the Cliffs 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-dover-castle-from-below-the-cliffs-r1183946, accessed 03 February 2025.