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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Würzburg, Rhine and Ostend Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Dover Castle 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Dover Castle’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 13 Recto:
Dover Castle 1840
D30481
Turner Bequest CCCIII 12
Pencil on flecked pale blue laid paper, 104 x 170 mm
Partial watermark (countermark): indecipherable maker’s name
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘12’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCIII – 12’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally. Albeit slight, it appears to show the keep of Dover Castle from the west, with the towers around the Constable’s Gate below, probably drawn while passing up Castle Hill Road from the harbour (see the verso; D30482) in the direction of Deal; see folio 12 verso opposite (D30480; CCCIII 11a), where there is also a similar Dover view. This aspect is now largely screened by trees; among earlier views of the castle, compare for example Tate D19349 (Turner Bequest CCXIV 256a) among those in the 1825 Holland sketchbook.
The castle is seen from the sea on folio 14 recto (D30483; CCCIII 13); these sketches and a few others fall within a sequence of coastal views at Ostend, marking the end of Turner’s long Continental itinerary; see under folio 1 recto (D30460).1

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
See also Powell 1995, p. 246.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Dover Castle 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-dover-castle-r1196241, accessed 05 July 2024.