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

This slight drawing was made with the page turned horizontally. It seems to show the same fortifications as folio 15 verso (D30486; CCCIII 14a), perhaps the early nineteenth-century Fort Napoleon, an unadorned block on a pentagonal plan within concentric bastions on the coast outside Ostend, with a spire and perhaps slight indications of a windmill’s sails on the horizon. For numerous Ostend views on adjacent pages of this sketchbook, marking the end of Turner’s 1840 tour, see under folio 1 recto (D30460).

The Turner Bequest number for this page lacks the usual ‘a’ suffix to indicate a verso in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory.1 The otherwise blank recto is inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘16’ and stamped in black ‘CCCIII – 16’ at the bottom right, in sequence with adjacent leaves. When Tate accession numbers were assigned, the present page was initially designated as D30489, but the redundant number was subsequently cancelled.

Technical notes:

There is some brown staining around the outer edges, probably dating from the 1928 Tate Gallery flood.