Joseph Mallord William Turner

The Lighthouse ?at Dieppe

1845

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Dieppe Sketchbook
Medium: Gouache and watercolour on paper
Dimensions: Support: 232 × 332 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D35474
Turner Bequest CCCLX 16

Catalogue entry

To rich colouristic effect, this sketch shows a lighthouse, presumably the one at Dieppe harbour,1 lit up against a stormy or, as Finberg thought, evening sky.2 The churning, yellowy-grey sea and the impression of disturbance in the sky’s mixture of wet and dry lead-grey brush-work evoke a distinctive littoral meteorology.

For reasons set out in the Technical notes in the sketchbook Introduction, this work appears inverted in relation to the volume as foliated.

For the history of Dieppe’s harbour infrastructure, see Jacques Bialek, Évolution du Port de Dieppe du XVIIe Siècle à nos Jours, Dieppe 1996.

Finberg 1909, vol.II, p.1170.

Verso:

Blank; except for patches of watercolour transference and brush-strokes continued from folio 16 recto opposite (D35475; Turner Bequest CCCLX 17).

John Chu
February 2014

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