J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

Turner has used the double page spread, continuing onto folio 12 recto opposite (D35283) to capture this view of Dover Castle from Shakespeare Cliff. The cubic form of the twelfth-century castle is sketched lightly on top of the distant hill (with what looks to be the church of Mary Sub Castro below it, with one of the towers of the Roman lighthouses).

The view is taken from Western Heights; the bridge in the foreground links the cliff path to a series of fortifications built there between 1793 and 1814 to fend off French invasion during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. This was a familiar vantage point for Turner: he had sketched this same view in the Richmond Hill; Hastings to Margate sketchbook of c.1816–19 (Tate D10473; Turner Bequest CXL 33a) and the Holland sketchbook of 1825 (D18843; CCXIV 2) and produced a watercolour of the view (currently untraced)1 that was engraved by George Cooke in 1826 for Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England (Tate impressions: T04424, T05246–T05251, T06000).