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

With the page turned horizontally, there are two separate sketches. Below, along the gutter, is a view northwards along Deal’s beach, with what is now the Timeball Tower Museum of Victoria Parade, with the arms of its semaphore mast apparently signalling; it is seen from nearby on folio 277 verso opposite (D19390) and its history is outlined under the recto of that leaf (D19389).

Above, careful attention is paid to Deal Castle, an artillery fort built for Henry VIII in 1539–40, overlooking the beach not far south of the tower, and now under the care of English Heritage off Victoria Road.1 It was constructed on a hexagonal plan with concentric bastions; see David Gentleman’s schematic rendering in his 1971 screenprint Deal from the Fortifications series (Tate impression: P04235). It later acquired the additional castellated structures shown here towards the right, since stripped away once more. They are shown in place from much the same angle in William Daniell’s 1823 aquatint Deal Castle from A Voyage Round Great Britain (Tate impression: T02949), which indicates the slightly ruinous condition of the south side, as suggested below the cupola in Turner’s sketch.

There are views from further back on the verso and folio 279 recto (D19392–D19393), and small studies on folio 274 recto (D19383). The castle is shown again in the Kent sketchbook of about 1830 (Tate D35818; Turner Bequest CCCLXIII 33) and in 1840’s Würzburg, Rhine and Ostend book (D30480; CCCIII 11a). For other views of Deal on adjacent pages and elsewhere, see under folio 273 recto (D19382).