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 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?The Normandy Coast 1845

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?The Normandy Coast’ 1845 (Inside back cover of sketchbook)
Inside back cover of sketchbook
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Inside Back Cover:
?The Normandy Coast 1845
D35486
Turner Bequest CCCLX 24
Gouache, pencil and watercolour on white wove paper, 232 x 332 mm
Inscribed in pencil ‘W’ bottom right, upside down
Inscribed by John Ruskin in illegibly faded red ink bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCLX 24’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Achieved without an underlying pencil drawing, the subject of this loose watercolour sketch is difficult to determine. Nonetheless, like folio 10 recto (D35469; Turner Bequest CCCLX 11), it may depict the structures at the mouth of Dieppe harbour as seen from the long stretch of gravel beach that runs west towards the medieval castle. The row of ‘dropped in’ red dots in the upper half the page ending in a grey-purple vertical may represent the western jetty. 1
For reasons set out in the Technical notes in the sketchbook Introduction, this work appears inverted in relation to the volume as foliated.

John Chu
February 2014

1
For the history of Dieppe’s harbour infrastructure, see Jacques Bialek, Évolution du Port de Dieppe du XVIIe Siècle à nos Jours, Dieppe 1996.

How to cite

John Chu, ‘?The Normandy Coast 1845 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-normandy-coast-r1173578, accessed 22 November 2024.