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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and French ... > Holland Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Views along the English Channel towards Dover and down to Folkestone, from the Cliffs near Capel-le-Ferne 1825

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Views along the English Channel towards Dover and down to Folkestone, from the Cliffs near Capel-le-Ferne’ 1825
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 5 Verso:
Views along the English Channel towards Dover and down to Folkestone, from the Cliffs near Capel-le-Ferne 1825
D18850
Turner Bequest CCXIV 5a
Pencil on white wove paper, 95 x 155 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page turned horizontally, what at first sight appears to be a single sketch seems rather to conflate two separate views from the Channel cliffs west of Dover (see under folio 2 recto; D18843). Across the bottom left and centre, the prospect is eastwards in the general direction of the town, albeit apparently overlapping with a view on the right, south-west across East Wear Bay towards Folkestone (see under folio 8 recto; D18855), with the tower of St Mary and St Eanswythe’s Church below the horizon in the distance.
The page is one of a short sequence plotting Turner’s route along the seven miles or so between the towns; here the shared viewpoint seems to be above the slopes of the Warren south of Capel-le-Ferne, as shown more clearly on the recto (D18849).

Matthew Imms
September 2020

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Views along the English Channel towards Dover and down to Folkestone, from the Cliffs near Capel-le-Ferne 1825 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2020, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2023, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-views-along-the-english-channel-towards-dover-and-down-to-r1202202, accessed 26 December 2024.