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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Kent Coast and Whaling c.1844-5 > Ideas of Folkestone Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Folkestone, with the Harbour Railway Viaduct and Two Martello Towers in the Distance 1845

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Folkestone, with the Harbour Railway Viaduct and Two Martello Towers in the Distance’ 1845
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 11 Recto:
Folkestone, with the Harbour Railway Viaduct and Two Martello Towers in the Distance 1845
D35372
Turner Bequest CCCLVI 12
Pencil and watercolour on white wove paper, 230 x 328 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘12’ top left, inverted
Blind stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCLVI–12’ top left, inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner has produced this pencil and watercolour drawing with the sketchbook turned upside down relative to the foliation. As with the previous folio (D35371), the drawing depicts the newly built railway viaduct and two Napoleonic Martello towers in the distance. Background topography sketched in pencil has been left unpainted. Turner has used fine strokes of pale red wash to delineate the structure of the viaduct and track. An isolated structure drawn in pencil may represent the beginnings of further harbour buildings. The foreground has been rendered with various hatched markings and broad strokes of red, brown, grey, and green wash layered atop faint pencil notations.

Alice Rylance-Watson
February 2013

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Folkestone, with the Harbour Railway Viaduct and Two Martello Towers in the Distance 1845 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, June 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-folkestone-with-the-harbour-railway-viaduct-and-two-martello-r1142150, accessed 10 May 2024.