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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Spring Tour of Northern France 1845 > Boulogne Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Rocky Shore, with the Tour de Croy in the Distance 1845

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Rocky Shore, with the Tour de Croy in the Distance’ 1845
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 11 Recto:
A Rocky Shore, with the Tour de Croy in the Distance 1845

D35414
Turner Bequest CCCLVIII 12
Gouache, pencil and watercolour on white wove paper, 230 x 325 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red in ‘12’ bottom right
Blind stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards centre right
Stamped in black ‘CCCLVIII 12’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the addition of a pair of boat masts framing the scene to the right, Turner records a view very similar to folio 3 recto (D35406; TB CCCLVIII 4). In both, a boulder-strewn foreground and high headland draws the eye out to the distant form of the eighteenth-century Tour de Croy stranded on its rocky reef.1
The offshore fort and the line of the sea are picked out in lilac hence, presumably, Finberg’s assumption that the sketch represents a dawn scene.2 The impression of overlapping hills on the headland has been achieved by loading the edge of the brush with a greater intensity of ochre pigment and tracing the profile of each hill in single sweeps.
1
Pierre-André Wimet, ‘Un vestige boulonnais de la Guerre de Sept ans – La tour de Croy, à Wimereux’, Bulletin de la Commission Départementale des Monuments Historiques du Pas-de-Calais, vol.6, no.1, 1935, pp.418–22.
2
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.1168.
Technical notes:
There is a sparse scattering of very small black marks on the surface of the page.
Verso:
Blank, except for large patches of transference from folio 12 recto opposite (D35415; Turner Bequest CCCLVIII 13).

John Chu
November 2013

How to cite

John Chu, ‘A Rocky Shore, with the Tour de Croy in the Distance 1845 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-rocky-shore-with-the-tour-de-croy-in-the-distance-r1173515, accessed 25 April 2024.