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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Dover Castle and the Cliffs towards the South Foreland from the Harbour, with Boats under Sail 1825

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 272 Verso:
Dover Castle and the Cliffs towards the South Foreland from the Harbour, with Boats under Sail 1825
D19381
Turner Bequest CCXIV 272a
Pencil on white wove paper, 95 x 155 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page turned horizontally, Dover Castle, as Finberg recognised,1 seen to the north-east across the harbour, with the undulating cliffs towards the South Foreland on the right. Eric Shanes has also linked this drawing2 to a watercolour, Dover (Tate D18154; Turner Bequest CCVIII U),3 engraved in 1827 for the Ports of England (Tate impressions: T04828–T04829). See also under folio 256 verso (D19349), a closer study of the castle from the south-west which likely informed the Ports composition, as well as a concurrent Southern Coast design. Compare Tate D19407 and D19409 (Turner Bequest CCXV 4, 5) in the contemporary Holland, Meuse and Cologne sketchbook.
Along with a variety of other vessels, the Ports design includes what Shanes identified as ‘a lugger’4 with squarish sails, at about the same point relative to the castle and cliffs as the sails towards the right here. This is the last of nearly forty consecutive pages towards the end of this sketchbook devoted to aspects of Dover and its castle, beginning with folio 253 verso (D19343–D19381). For Turner’s many other views there in this sketchbook and elsewhere, see under folio 2 recto (D18843), and see the book’s Introduction for discussion of its many shipping studies.

Matthew Imms
September 2020

1
See Finberg 1909, II, p.661.
2
Shanes 1979, p.153.
3
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.387 no.753, reproduced.
4
Shanes 1981, p.35.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Dover Castle and the Cliffs towards the South Foreland from the Harbour, with Boats under Sail 1825 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2020, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2023, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-dover-castle-and-the-cliffs-towards-the-south-foreland-from-r1202733, accessed 12 June 2026.