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

Art historian Ian Warrell identifies this sketch, inverted in relation to the sketchbook as foliated, as a view of the cliffs around Soldiers’ Bay to the south of St Peter Port in Guernsey.1 He ventures that Turner’s note of ‘Smugglers B’ may be an old alternative name for the area, although it may also have resulted from a mishearing or flight of fancy on the part of the artist. If all the elements on the page constitute a single view, the distant island identified by Turner as Sark would certainly locate the viewpoint on Guernsey’s west coast.