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

With the page turned vertically, there are two views centred on the Porte des Dunes, off the sloping Grand Rue along the north-west side of Boulogne’s walled old town or haute ville. Turner’s crabbed note below the upper appears to name the medieval gateway rather than reading ‘Medun’, as Finberg rendered it as if a place name,1 which does not correspond directly to any in France; later Turner scholars identified the setting in general terms.2

The first view is north-eastwards up the hill, with the gateway itself obscured between the two projecting towers at the centre. Various locals line the slope, perhaps with a priest in black at the top and women with baskets; labelled ‘wine merchant’, a ‘man bent under the weight, carries on his shoulders at the end of a stick two heavy jugs’, as Maurice Guillaud has observed.3 The prominent Tribunal de Grande Instance court building now looms above the towers.

Below, the prospect is downhill to the south-west, with the gate’s archway in the foreground. Old photographs show the rounded arch of the niche with statues of the Madonna and Child flanked by angels in a shallow boat, with the city’s coat of arms below, as shown in the main sketch and the larger study above. The arch is now pointed, and the statues and boat have been altered or replaced, with the angels now kneeling on a higher prow and stern. The various details below are slightly jumbled, with what seems to be a carriage and dark figures, and the adjacent note is hard to make out. Below to the right, looking south-west, St Nicholas’s Church is shown half-way down to the harbour, with a continuation and the ‘Sea’ on the horizon above; later buildings now obscure all but the spire.

The inner side of the Porte des Dunes is seen in the background on folio 12 recto opposite (D19421), and others around the walls are shown on folios 10 recto and 80 verso (D19418, D19537). For the Boulogne subjects in this sketchbook and elsewhere, see under folio 8 verso (D19416). Among those in the present book, Gerald Wilkinson described the lively sketches here and on D19537 as having ‘a happy quality of colour and contrast’.4