Joseph Mallord William Turner

On this page, Turner worked up two sketches of the medieval fortress of Cornet Castle on its island in the bay of St Peter Port. For the key entry on this landmark, see folio 29 verso (D23575; Turner Bequest CCLII 29a). Inverted in relation to the sketchbook as foliated, the top sketch also includes a view of the town rising up the harbour’s sheltering hills. Towards the top left-hand corner, the neo-Gothic tower of Elizabeth College1 and the cylindrical ‘Grecian Doric’ church steeple of St James-the-Less are featured.2 The town of St Peter Port is one of the major objects of study in this volume as outlined in the entry for folio 30 recto (D23576; Turner Bequest CCLII 30). A coastline of jagged rocks is sketched along the centre of the page of a type that abounds in the Channel Islands.