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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and French ... > Holland Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The King's Head Hotel and Other Buildings on Clarence Place and Crosswall beside Dover Harbour, with the Western Heights Above 1825

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The King's Head Hotel and Other Buildings on Clarence Place and Crosswall beside Dover Harbour, with the Western Heights Above’ 1825
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 254 Recto:
The King’s Head Hotel and Other Buildings on Clarence Place and Crosswall beside Dover Harbour, with the Western Heights Above 1825
D19344
Turner Bequest CCXIV 254
Pencil on white wove paper, 95 x 155 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?y Gable]’ towards top left, and ‘Red’ towards top centre, over roofs
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘54’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCXIV – 254’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg later annotated his 1909 Inventory entry (‘Houses, with cliffs beyond’): ‘Dover’.1 The Turner scholar C.F. Bell marked another copy in the same way.2 With the page turned horizontally, the view is north-westward to Clarence Place and Crosswall, along the quay on the west side of Dover Harbour, with the defences on the Western Heights rising beyond. Little remains of the original street plan among car parks and port facilities. The large building at the left is the King’s Head Hotel; only a fragment of the right-hand end of its frontage remains, attached to the corner of the later Cinque Port Arms.3 The hotel is seen obliquely and labelled in the foreground of the view from a little further west on folio 253 verso opposite (D19343).
This is among nearly forty consecutive pages towards the end of this sketchbook devoted to aspects of Dover and its castle (folios 253 verso opposite–272 verso; D19343–D19381). For Turner’s many other views there in this sketchbook and elsewhere, see under folio 2 recto (D18843).

Matthew Imms
September 2020

1
Undated MS note by Finberg (died 1939) in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.660.
2
Undated MS note by Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.660.
3
See photographs and a detailed history of the building at Barry Smith and Paul Skelton, ‘King’s Head Hotel’, Dover Kent Archives, accessed 3 August 2020, http://www.dover-kent.com/Kings-Head-Hotel.html.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The King’s Head Hotel and Other Buildings on Clarence Place and Crosswall beside Dover Harbour, with the Western Heights Above 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-the-kings-head-hotel-and-other-buildings-on-clarence-place-r1202696, accessed 18 May 2025.