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

Made with the page turned vertically, both of the larger drawings on this page seem to describe views of the lighthouse at South Foreland, near Dover, observed from a north-westerly perspective inland.1 An inscription of the letter ‘W’ at the centre of the page, towards the top, seems to act as a rough record of this fact. Turner takes up this theme early on in the sketchbook, and addresses it more than once. For the earliest example of the lighthouse at South Foreland and a comprehensive list of its subsequent appearances within the current sketchbook, see the entry for folio 8 recto (D17220). The same entry also outlines the history of the lighthouse, and considers James Hamilton’s argument that the Bell Rock commission ignited in Turner a more acute and consistently demonstrable interest in lighthouses.2

The topmost sketch on the present page is the closer of the two perspectives. The lighthouse itself is partially obscured behind the adjoining building, but is nonetheless visible here as a domed tower, slightly to the right of the central cluster. Stationed on a chalk cliff on the Kent coast, the lighthouse overlooks a calm sea in this sketch, which is indicated by Turner as a faint, horizontal line above the cliff edge.3

Between the drawing outlined above and its second iteration lower down the page, there is a small sketch of three houses. From the roof of the building on the left extends a single long line, crossed in two places by short lines on a horizontal plane. Turner describes this building again, later on in the sketchbook, on folio 69 verso (D17325).

The second drawing of the lighthouse, recorded towards the middle of the page, repeats the perspective adopted in the earlier sketch but at a greater distance. In this example, Turner does not indicate the flat horizon out at sea. More of the topography on the left of the page is exposed, revealing another building on the edge of the page.