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

Apart from an illegible note inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, this page was used horizontally for three small coastal sketches framed by rough pencil lines, and various associated notes relating to the rapidly changing sky towards sunset, typical of the tiny annotated thumbnail sketches Turner made as memoranda of such fleeting occasions; compare a page of sunset views over mountains, likely near Belluno, from the 1840 Rotterdam to Venice sketchbook (Tate D32401; Turner Bequest CCCXX 71). The largest of the drawings occupies the bottom left quarter, showing a silhouetted tower and a cross shape (likely indicating a windmill), and the disk of the sun emitting diagonal rays just above the horizon. Scrawled above appears to be ‘20 | [?warm] yel[...] [?lig...]’, presumably indicating yellow light, and below, ‘Os[...] | 20 [?Sun]’. At the bottom right, the same scene is repeated without the sun itself, but with its light still radiating. Here the crabbed notes seem to be ‘[...] 2’, ‘yell’, ‘dun’ and ‘cold [?sky]’, with ‘[?Light]’ at the bottom right.

Across the top, there may be a slight profile of cliffs or dunes, marked ‘Sch[...]’. Below is another sunset study, this time with what seem to be silhouetted sails. The notes here include ‘cold sky’, ‘yell[,...] Light Light | w yellow cloud [...]’, ‘cold | sand’, and ‘warm sea’. Below, the same word, probably ‘Parting’, is repeated twice, possibly on the verge of the sort of tentative poetic musings such transient conditions sometimes inspired in the artist (see the Introduction to the parallel subsection of Venetian Lagoon watercolours).

Turner’s note ‘Os[...]’ is the key to the setting, Ostend (locally Oostende, otherwise Ostende), the Flemish port and resort set half-way along the largely uninterrupted north-west-facing sandy beaches of the Belgian North Sea coast. The last stop on Turner’s long 1840 itinerary returning from Venice, its harbour is reached by a channel running inland on the east side of the original fortified town, at that time extended by parallel wooden piers; both the docks and the city have since seen much change and development. Turner had passed through on his way out from England or back home from his tours of 1817,1 1824 (albeit he continued by land to Calais before sailing),2 1825,3 1833,4 1839,5 and 1844.

Including this page, the Ostend drawings in the present book appear to run with a few interruptions as far as folio 22 recto (D30460–D30496; CCCIII 1–21), albeit likely made in reverse order (like the rest of the subjects in this book; see the Introduction), to fill up its last pages.6 Except for signs of the low sun’s rays on folio 2 recto (D30462), there is little to indicate the time of day or weather in the rest, so it may be appropriate to imagine the evocative sunset studies here as the last of the sequence, and the last made on the Continent in 1840. Meanwhile, as Turner seems to have had some time in hand on the coast, it is possible that three daylight watercolour studies of the clouds over the sea off a featureless beach in the 1840 Passau and Burg Hals sketchbook (Tate D33671–D33673; Turner Bequest CCCXL 6–8) stem from this occasion, either directly or in recollection.

Compare likely or definite pencil views and sky studies around Ostend in the 1817 Itinerary Rhine Tour sketchbook (Tate D12687; Turner Bequest CLIX 95a), the 1824 Rivers Meuse and Moselle book (D19897–D19902; CCXVI 173–175a), the 1825 Holland book (D19317–D19318, D19323, D19338; CCXIV 240a, 241, 243a, 251), the 1833 Brussels up to Mannheim – Rhine book (D29596–D29603; CCXCVI 1a–5), the 1839 Cochem to Coblenz – Home book (D28538; CCXCI 1; and inside the front cover, D41216), and the 1844 Ostend, Rhine and Berne book (D33048, D33079, D33086; CCCXXVII 6a, 22, 27a). There are also two separate sheets, yet to be firmly dated, inscribed ‘Ostend’: Tate D34598, D34767 (Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 198, 310).

The relatively detailed 1833 drawings complement those in the present book, with Tate D29599–D29601 there showing the old pier, lighthouse and windmills, and the ‘Peperbusse’ spire of St Peter’s Church (which survives the building’s subsequent destruction by fire, albeit now overshadowed by the soaring twin spires of SS Peter and Paul). A slender modern lighthouse has replaced the one Turner shows, standing on the shore near the stub of the Oost Staketsel pier east of the Havengeul channel leading to the Voorhaven, within the larger zone encompassed by later breakwaters. Overlooking the beach not far to the north-east stands the forbiddingly utilitarian early nineteenth century Fort Napoleon, on a pentagonal plan within concentric bastions.

Turner exhibited a seascape of Ostend at the Royal Academy in 1844 (Neue Pinakothek, Munich),7 showing sailing boats in blustery weather at the mouth of the channel to the harbour, as if looking inland from the end of the eastern pier (with numerous figures looking on), with the other in the middle distance; one of the sketches on folio 6 recto (D30470) may be from this viewpoint. A group of watercolours of around 1840 have traditionally been associated with Great Yarmouth, an equally exposed port on the Norfolk North Sea coast.8 However, it is ‘not known for certain that Turner visited Yarmouth after ... 1824’,9 and Ostend has been suggested as the subject of some of them by Ian Warrell and others in recent years.

The one now called Ostend Harbour (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin),10 shows a lighthouse and windmill silhouetted against a sunset sky, and perhaps relates directly to the studies on the present page, particularly the two with a juxtaposed tower and cross form; compare too various elements of folios 4 verso, 6 verso, 19 recto and 20 recto (D30467, D30471, D30492, D30496; CCCIII 4a, 6a, 18, 19.11 See also a view with a fishing net cast up on a beach with a spire, lighthouse and windmill in the distance (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, as ‘Yarmouth, Norfolk’),12 and a moonlit scene now known as A Steamer off Ostend (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight), a sea view comparable to the Munich painting.13

Technical notes:

For discussion of the watermark, see the overall technical notes in the sketchbook’s Introduction.1