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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Northern France 1832 > Guernsey Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Buildings with Boats, ?English Channel ?1832

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Buildings with Boats, ?English Channel’ ?1832
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 43 Verso:
Buildings with Boats, ?English Channel ?1832
D23600
Turner Bequest CCLII 43a
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 187 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Art historian A.J. Finberg gave ‘Cap de la Hève’ close to le Havre as the title of this piece, supposing it to be continuous with the clearly identifiable scene on folio 44 recto opposite (D23601; Turner Bequest CCLII 44).1 Ships’ masts, a wooded hillside, and a copse of trees certainly suggest a harbour or dry dock, although the scale and detail of the buildings are too cursory to identify a particular location. Harbours at Le Havre, Southampton, the Channel Islands, and the embouchure of the Seine were all much studied in this volume as set out in the Introduction to the sketchbook. The drawing is inverted in relation to the sketchbook as foliated.

John Chu
April 2014

1
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.765.

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Buildings with Boats, ?English Channel ?1832 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 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-buildings-with-boats-english-channel-r1175092, accessed 19 September 2024.