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

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

Joseph Mallord William Turner Plan of ?Wimereux Harbour 1845

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Plan of ?Wimereux Harbour’ 1845
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 2 Verso:
Plan of ?Wimereux Harbour 1845
D35405
Turner Bequest CCCLVIII 3v
Pencil on white wove paper, 230 x 326 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
As inside the front cover (D35402; Turner Bequest CCCLVIII 1), this page features a roughly sketched plan of a harbour. The drawing is too cursory to confirm a definite location although the ‘L’ form corresponds to the shape of the artificial port at Wimereux, refurbished and enhanced as part of Napoleon’s plans to invade England in 1805.1
Finberg did not list this drawing in his 1909 Inventory.2
1
See eighteenth-century Wimereux habour plan in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris (FRBNF 40735970); J. Brunet, New Guide to Boulogne-sur-Mer, 3rd ed., Boulogne 1840, p.131.
2
See A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.1168.
Technical notes:
Blue spots of watercolour have transferred from folio 3 recto opposite (D35406; Turner Bequest CCCLVIII 4).

John Chu
November 2013

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Plan of ?Wimereux Harbour 1845 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2013, 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-plan-of-wimereux-harbour-r1173506, accessed 12 July 2025.