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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Meuse-Mosel, Luxembourg and Northern ... > Rivers Meuse and Moselle Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Coastal Scenes ?near Dunkirk 1824

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Coastal Scenes ?near Dunkirk’ 1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 186 Recto:
Coastal Scenes ?near Dunkirk 1824
D19911
Turner Bequest CCXVI 180
Pencil on white wove paper, 118 x 78 mm
Inscribed in blue ink by Ruskin ‘180’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CCXVI–180’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
These four drawings of coastal scenes were produced with the sketchbook turned upside down. The uppermost and third sketch show a coast line and a distant harbour, possibly Dunkirk and the Tour du Leughenaer. Turner travelled to the French city from Ostend in Flanders on 8 September 1824. In the central sketch a group of figures stand before a windmill on the beach with the coastline in view beyond them. At rear is a fine though diminutive study of a sailing boat gliding away from the viewer towards the horizon; the sky is expansive, filled with drifting cumuli and wispy strands of cirrus. Dunkirk is sketched again on Tate D19915–D19919 Turner Bequest CCXVI 182–184a.

Alice Rylance-Watson
June 2014

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Coastal Scenes ?near Dunkirk 1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2014, 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-coastal-scenes-near-dunkirk-r1174706, accessed 26 April 2024.