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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Northern France 1832 > Guernsey Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Loophole Tower, Guernsey; Creux Harbour, Sark Island ?1832

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Loophole Tower, Guernsey; Creux Harbour, Sark Island’ ?1832
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 67 Verso:
Loophole Tower, Guernsey; Creux Harbour, Sark Island ?1832
D23648
Turner Bequest CCLII 67a
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 187 mm
Partial watermark ‘J. JELL | 18’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The tower that presides over the harbour scene with shipping at the centre of this page is one of Guernsey’s distinctive eighteenth-century ‘loophole’ towers, built to defend the island against the French invasion.1
Inverted in relation to the sketchbook as foliated, the faint sketch of coastal rocks on the top half of the page follows the outline of the rock formations around Creux Harbour on the neighbouring island of Sark. This tiny bay constitutes one of the volume’s major preoccupations; for a list of these drawings, see the entry for folio 58 recto (D23629; Turner Bequest CCLII 58).

John Chu
April 2014

1
W.H. Clements, Towers of Strength: the Story of the Martello Towers, Barnsley 1999, p.85.

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Loophole Tower, Guernsey; Creux Harbour, Sark Island ?1832 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 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-loophole-tower-guernsey-creux-harbour-sark-island-r1175140, accessed 20 April 2024.