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 A Rainbow on the ?Normandy Coast 1845

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Rainbow on the ?Normandy Coast’ 1845
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 9 Recto:
A Rainbow on the ?Normandy Coast 1845
D35468
Turner Bequest CCCLX 10
Watercolour on white wove paper, 232 x 332 mm
Watermarked ‘J WHATMAN TURKEY MILL 1844’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘10’ top left, upside down
Blind stamped with the Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCLX 10’ top left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With its choppy waves and bold evocation of changeable weather, this sketch is akin to the littoral subjects with which Turner filled the ‘roll sketchbooks’ of his most recent trip to the French coast, some five months earlier, as discussed in a previous section of this catalogue; see the Ambleteuse and Wimereux sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest CCCLVII) and the Boulogne sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest CCCLVIII). Special attention has been paid to recreating the glowing presence of the rainbow that frames the scene to the left, and to the particular colouration of a simultaneously sunlit and rain-soaked vista.
For reasons set out in the Technical notes in the sketchbook Introduction, this work appears inverted in relation to the volume as foliated.
Verso:
Blank; except for very slight spots of watercolour transferred from folio 10 recto opposite (D35469; Turner Bequest CCCLX 11).

John Chu
February 2014

How to cite

John Chu, ‘A Rainbow on 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-a-rainbow-on-the-normandy-coast-r1173564, accessed 21 November 2024.