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

With the page turned horizontally, the setting is Folkestone, as tentatively suggested by Finberg.1 The view is east-north-east from south-west of the cliff-top St Mary and St Eanswythe’s Church, with bare, jagged cliffs in the foreground, the harbour below, and the undulating, compressed line of chalk cliffs along East Wear Bay stretching away to the distinctive profile of Shakespeare Cliff, about five miles off on the near side of Dover (see under folio 2 recto; D18843).

The setting relates to that of the watercolour Folkestone, Kent (Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati),2 engraved in 1826 for the Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast (Tate impressions: T05254, T05997) and enlivened by the introduction of a band of smugglers burying kegs of spirits in the foreground, while the sparkling succession of chalk cliffs in the distance extend twice as far to the right of the tower. The area around the church has since seen much development, with buildings and trees preventing an immediately equivalent view today from along the Leas or the Road of Remembrance, which descends to the harbour. See also folios 17 verso, 18 recto and 19 verso (D18874–D18875, D18878), and studies of the church on folio 282 recto (D19399).

The overall viewpoint of the present sketch is closest to the watercolour’s, which appears to incorporate the low cliffs from the foregrounds of D18875 and D18878. There are also close-up studies of the church on folio 282 recto (D19399). Turner reprised the scene in a loose pencil and watercolour study in the 1845 Ideas of Folkestone sketchbook (Tate D35370; Turner Bequest CCCLVI 10). For his numerous other views around the town in the present sketchbook and elsewhere, see under folio 8 recto (D18855), where the church is seen from the harbour.