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

With the page turned vertically, there are two slight, separate subjects, both helpfully labelled by Turner and transcribed by Finberg.1 In the upper (outer) third, on the left Dover Castle is shown in the distance to the north-east, with the harbour’s old south pier aligned below it as in the wider view on folio 2 recto (D19403). The figure standing to the right of various moored sailing boats is likely a fisherman handling a weighted net. The ‘DR’ towards the stern of one boat forms the two-letter code still current for Dover; compare a similar inscription in the contemporary Holland sketchbook (Tate D19365; Turner Bequest CCXIV 264a).

Below is a slight, faint coastal profile, labelled ‘Bol’ (sic) for Boulogne on the French side of the Channel. The distant vertical feature is presumably the Colonne de la Grande Armée on the heights north of the port; compare ‘Bonaparte’s Column’, one of the labelled views in the vicinity in ink on a sheet of blue paper, likely from a year or two later (Tate D24892; CCLX 56). There are other views from the sea on folios 6 recto (not as certain as the rest), 7 verso and 8 recto (D19411, D19414–D19415), and possibly inside the back cover (D41013); see also 1845’s Dieppe and Kent sketchbook (Tate D35573, D35636; CCCLXI 49, 84). The column is seen from Boulogne itself on folios 15 verso and 18 recto (D19426, D19431). For a sequence of sketches in and around the city in the present book and more in the Holland sketchbook and elsewhere, see under folio 8 verso (D19416).

The Boulogne sea views are interspersed with others showing aspects of Dover, ranging from Shakespeare Cliff and the Western Heights to its west, north across the harbour to the castle, and eastwards along the chalk cliffs to the South Foreland, on the verso and folios 2 recto–5 verso, 6 verso and 7 recto (D19402–D19410, D19412–D19413). Of these, D19410 comprises views from the sea, extending west to include Hythe and Folkestone. For the many views of Dover in the Holland book and elsewhere, see under Tate D18843 (Turner Bequest CCXIV 2).

As discussed in the Introductions to the sketchbook and the present tour, the relationship is unclear between the views of Kent here and (more extensively) in the Holland book and Turner’s autumn 1825 itinerary around the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and the coast of France. As Boulogne is the last Continental subject in the longer and more comprehensive Holland book, which concludes with an extensive sequence of subjects around the Kent coast, it seems reasonable to propose that Turner sailed back from there, perhaps directly to Dover. That Dover and Boulogne are interspersed in the first pages of the present book as foliated is not necessarily an issue, as its leaves have been dismembered and rebound since Turner’s time, apparently far from their original order, as discussed in the Introduction.