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 The Oost Staketsel Pier and Beacon at Ostend; ?Fort Napoleon 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Oost Staketsel Pier and Beacon at Ostend; ?Fort Napoleon’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 15 Verso:
The Oost Staketsel Pier and Beacon at Ostend; ?Fort Napoleon 1840
D30486
Turner Bequest CCCIII 14a
Pencil on flecked pale blue laid paper, 104 x 170 mm
Partial watermark: Tree of Liberty
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?Sea]’ towards bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
There are two sketches here, made one above the other with the page turned horizontally. At the top is the most detailed study in this sketchbook of the beacon at the seaward end of Ostend’s old wooden east pier; compare views in the 1833 Brussels up to Mannheim – Rhine sketchbook (Tate D29599–D29600; Turner Bequest CCXCVI 3, 3a). See also folios 8 recto and verso (D30474–D30475), and folio 14 verso (D30484; CCCIII 13a).
Below is a separate view of fortifications, likely the early nineteenth-century Fort Napoleon, an unadorned block on a pentagonal plan within concentric bastions, overlooking the sea not far east of the pier; compare folios 1 verso and 5 recto (D30461, D30468), and 17 verso (D30488; CCCIII 16). For numerous Ostend views on adjacent pages of this sketchbook, marking the end of Turner’s 1840 tour, see under folio 1 recto (D30460).

Matthew Imms
September 2018

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Oost Staketsel Pier and Beacon at Ostend; ?Fort Napoleon 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-the-oost-staketsel-pier-and-beacon-at-ostend-fort-napoleon-r1196246, accessed 05 July 2024.