Joseph Mallord William Turner

The Lighthouse at Ostend, with the Town in the Distance

1840

Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)

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Not on display

Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Würzburg, Rhine and Ostend Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 104 × 170 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D30467
Turner Bequest CCCIII 4 a

Catalogue entry

The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally, showing the lighthouse (since replaced) overlooking the harbour channel north-east of Ostend, seen in the distance with the spire of the old St Peter’s Church (the ‘Peperbusse’) and a windmill. Turner ran out of space at the top of the slender tower, drawing a separate detail of its lantern to the left. The sketch at the top right may be a continuation to the right, showing the old east pier. The numbers ‘2’ and ‘3’ are in sequence with a ‘1’ on the recto (D30466).
Niamh Mac Nally has noted this page in relation to a watercolour now known as Ostend Harbour (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin),1 which shows the lighthouse and a nearby windmill against a sunset sky.2 For other watercolours and the numerous Ostend views on adjacent pages of this sketchbook, marking the end of Turner’s 1840 tour, see under folio 1 recto (D30460).3

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.469 no.1408, as ‘Yarmouth’, reproduced.
2
See Mac Nally 2012, p.60.
3
See also Powell 1995, pp.72, 82 note 71, 246.

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