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

With the page turned horizontally, the view is south past the masts of moored boats along what is now the Quai des Américains on the east side of Dunkirk’s harbour. In the left foreground is the octagonal, brick and stone medieval Tour du Leughenaer, then serving as a lighthouse. There is a detail of a building beside it with a note of classical ‘Corinthian’ articulation; today, after severe war damage and much development, the tower is the only structure surviving in the vicinity from Turner’s time. Beyond, among lower towers and cupolas, is the Gothic belfry of St Éloi’s Church (see under folio 227 verso; D19291); it is now obscured by later buildings.

The Leughenaer tower is possibly shown in outline in a small sketch in the 1824 Rivers Meuse and Moselle sketchbook (Tate D19942; Turner Bequest CCXVI 196). As foliated, this is the last Dunkirk view in the present book; for other here and elsewhere, see under D19291, and see the sketchbook’s Introduction for discussion of its many shipping studies.