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 ?Dunkirk Harbour 1824

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Dunkirk Harbour’ 1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 191 Recto:
?Dunkirk Harbour 1824
D19920
Turner Bequest CCXVI 185
Pencil on white wove paper, 78 x 118 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘[...] [?ing] and [...]’ top centre towards right
Inscribed in blue ink by Ruskin ‘185’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CCXVI–185’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
These very rough jottings may show coastal scenes at Dunkirk Harbour. The rectangular profile of a tower visible in three of the views could be the Tour du Leughenaer, or ‘Liar’s Tower’, remodelled as a lighthouse in 1814.1 There is also a windmill and a rather scrawled inscription by Turner which is almost entirely illegible. The artist’s handling is extremely irregular; this sketch was likely taken in the same sitting as that on its verso: Tate D19921; Turner Bequest CCXVI 185a. For other drawings of Dunkirk see Tate D19911, D19915–D19919; Turner Bequest CCXVI 180, 182–184a.

Alice Rylance-Watson
June 2014

1
‘Dunkerque, Tour de Leughenaer, Côte d’Opal, accessed 1 October 2014, http://www.cote-dopale.com/tourisme/monuments-historiques/dunkerque-tour-du-leughenaer

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘?Dunkirk Harbour 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-dunkirk-harbour-r1174715, accessed 24 September 2024.