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 Vale, Guernsey ?1832

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Vale, Guernsey’ ?1832
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 84 Verso:
Vale, Guernsey ?1832
D23682
Turner Bequest CCLII 84a
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 187 mm
Partial watermark ‘YMAN | 28’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Valle’ towards top centre
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner worked panoramic views of the intensely defended north-eastern coast of Guernsey onto this page. The sketch of a bay rimmed with towers and rocky outcrops featured on the top half the page is inscribed with the note ‘Valle’, locating the scene in the Vale, or Clos du Valle, region of the island. Inverted in relation to the sketchbook as foliated, the sketched passages in the lower half of the page include a view of a large fortress in the bottom right-hand corner, possibly Vale Castle,1 a tall gabled building next to a cluster of masts in the centre, and one of Guersney’s distinctive eighteenth-century ‘loophole’ towers towards the bottom left.2
1
J.T. Cochrane, A Guide to the Island of Guernsey, St Peter Port 1826, p.99.
2
W.H. Clements, Towers of Strength: the Story of the Martello Towers, Barnsley 1999, p.85.
Technical notes:
There is a small brown mark in the centre of the page towards the right-hand edge.

John Chu
April 2014

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Vale, Guernsey ?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-vale-guernsey-r1175174, accessed 25 April 2024.