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

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.