Fishing Boats and the Fort at Ambleteuse

1845

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Ambleteuse and Wimereux Sketchbook
Medium: Graphite and watercolour on paper
Dimensions: Support: 238 x 336 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D35390
Turner Bequest CCCLVII 5

Catalogue entry

To the left of this sketch, amidst a burst of yellow sunlight can be seen the seventeenth-century fort just off the coast near Ambleteuse, which also features in the Boulogne sketchbook of the same tour (Tate D35413; Turner Bequest CCCLVIII 11).1 A similar compositional device also features in the two preceding sketches as originally constituted in the present sketchbook (D35388–D35389; Turner Bequest CCCLVII 3, 4). On the same side, somewhat closer to the viewer, is a foreshortened view of a lone fishing vessel. Less easy to make out is the red object at the centre of the composition. Robert Upstone perceives a man in a top hat running across the beach in these pencil and brush dashes although a red-sailed fishing boat coming into harbour is more consistent with the sketch’s perspective.2 By the 1840s, small-scale fishing had become the main industry of the now ‘wretched’ village at Ambleteuse as its military-strategic importance declined during the post-Napoleonic peace with Great Britain.3 With unusual exactness, Turner’s inscription dates this sketch to 12 May 1845.

See Jean-Denis G.G. Lepage, French Fortifications, 1715–1815: An Illustrated History, Jefferson NC 2010, p.188.

Upstone 1993, p.56.

J. Brunet, New Guide to Boulogne-sur-Mer, 3rd ed., Boulogne 1840, p.133.

Technical notes:

There is a margin of discolouration to the extreme left of the page.

Verso:

Blank

John Chu
December 2013

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