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 Crucifix at Dieppe Harbour 1845

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Crucifix at Dieppe Harbour’ 1845
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 2 Recto:
The Crucifix at Dieppe Harbour 1845
D35461
Turner Bequest CCCLX 3
Pencil, gouache and watercolour on white wove paper, 232 x 332 mm
Watermarked ‘J WHATMAN TURKEY MILL 1844’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘3’ top left, upside down
Blind stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom left
Stamped in black ‘CCCLX 3’ top left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner positioned himself facing north-east, close to the mouth of the harbour at Dieppe to take this sketch. The crucifix then on the west bank of the channel connecting the port to the sea can be seen towards the centre left of the page.1 Above the far quay rise the chalk cliffs that run inland following the line of the channel; their whiteness has been achieved by ‘reserving’ a bank of blank paper and tinting the adjacent sky a pale grey.
For reasons set out in the Technical notes in the sketchbook Introduction, this work appears inverted in relation to the volume as foliated.
1
See the early nineteenth-century map on the inside front cover of Simonia Pakenham, Sixty Miles from England: The English at Dieppe, 1814–1914, London 1967.
Verso:
Blank; except for small spots of watercolour transferred from folio 3 recto opposite (D35462; Turner Bequest CCCLX 4).

John Chu
February 2014

How to cite

John Chu, ‘The Crucifix at Dieppe Harbour 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-crucifix-at-dieppe-harbour-r1173557, accessed 21 November 2024.