Joseph Mallord William Turner

Winchelsea from the South-East, near the Royal Military Canal

c.1816–19

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

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Richmond Hill; Hastings to Margate Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 155 × 95 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D10507
Turner Bequest CXL 50 a

Catalogue entry

Finberg’s suggestion that this sketch represents Winchelsea is surely right; the view must be from near the Royal Military Canal below the town to the south-east. Folio 62 verso of this sketchbook (D10517; Turner Bequest CXL 55a) has a different view of Winchelsea from the Royal Military Road (built 1804–9) from Rye, which Turner used for a watercolour in which he included the canal (private collection).1 As discussed under D10517, this watercolour is fictitious in its depiction of the canal and the present sketch, while very slight, may give a truer picture of its relationship to the town on its hill.

David Blayney Brown
July 2011

1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.348 no.430.

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