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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Autumn Tour of Northern France 1845 > Dieppe Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Dieppe Castle from the Beach 1845

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Dieppe Castle from the Beach’ 1845
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 6 Recto:
Dieppe Castle from the Beach 1845
D35465
Turner Bequest CCCLX 7
Pencil and watercolour on white wove paper, 232 x 332 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘7’ top left, upside down
Blind stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCLX 7’ top left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This page depicts the eastern side of the castle at Dieppe as seen from the long stretch gravel beach that runs east back to the port. The bulk of the medieval structure, with its turrets and high walls, shades into lighter shades of brown as it ascends the chalk cliffs to the right-hand side.1 Detail and incident have been lightly dabbed in with the tip of the brush including dark brown dots to capture small shadows in the castle’s battlements. A loose collection of grey ‘wet-on-wet’ strokes towards the bottom right depict a fishing boat; evidence of the town’s industrial mainstay.2 By way of a contrast to this workaday coastal object, the town’s elegant Bathing Establishment, or ‘Casino’, can be seen at the base of the chalk cliffs, albeit with its fanciful architecture truncated to a pair of small ochre box-like objects.3
For reasons set out in the Technical notes in the sketchbook Introduction, this work appears inverted in relation to the volume as foliated.
1
For the castle’s history, see Claude Féron, Dieppe, Paris 1981, pp.22–3.
2
John Murray (ed.), Hand-Book for Travellers in France, revised ed., London, Paris and Leipzig 1844, p.23.
3
For a description of this structure, see Simonia Pakenham, Sixty Miles from England: The English at Dieppe, 1814–1914, London 1967, p.18.
Verso:
Blank; except for patches of grey and brown watercolour transferred from folio 7 recto opposite (D35466; Turner Bequest CCCLX 8).

John Chu
February 2014

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Dieppe Castle from the Beach 1845 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-dieppe-castle-from-the-beach-r1173561, accessed 25 April 2024.