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

Turner filled much of this page with multiple panoramas of distant coastal terrain with harbour buildings and shipping; the sketches on the bottom half are inverted in relation to the sketchbook as foliated. The sketched passages towards the top and bottom left-hand corners of the page continue over onto folio 27 verso opposite (D23571; Turner Bequest CCLII 27a). The two drawings along the bottom of the page depict the harbour mouth at Gosport and Portsmouth, presumably sketched as Turner’s Southampton ferry proceeded through the Solent. Portsmouth is recognisable by the distinctive domed tower of its cathedral, which occurs twice in the lower left-hand quadrant of the page.