Joseph Mallord William Turner

Turner prepared this page with a grey watercolour wash and, to the left of the page, commenced a sketch of some coastal buildings surmounted by a windmill. A small patch of white chalk towards the top left-hand corner suggests that the artist was considering heightening the scene in the manner seen on folio 2 recto (D23527; Turner Bequest CCLII 2). Towards the right-hand side of the page, a distant tower is depicted, possibly locating this scene at St Sampson Harbour to the east of Guernsey, which was defended by several of the island’s distinctive eighteenth-century ‘loophole’ forts.1