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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Folkestone; Fishing Boats off the Shore c.1816-19

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 39 Verso:
Folkestone; Fishing Boats off the Shore circa 1816–19
D10477
Turner Bequest CXL 35a
Pencil on white wove paper, 155 x 95 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This quick outline is the origin of the watercolour (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut)1 engraved by Joseph Horsbrough in 1831 for Picturesque Views in England and Wales. The view is up the Channel coast past Folkestone harbour towards Dover. In the foreground of the watercolour, Turner added coastguards supervising the uprooting of tubs of contraband that smugglers have buried in the sand.2

David Blayney Brown
July 2011

1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.396 no.826.
2
For the smugglers’ practice of ‘sinking and creeping’ see Shanes 1979, p.34.

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Folkestone; Fishing Boats off the Shore c.1816–19 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2011, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-folkestone-fishing-boats-off-the-shore-r1131467, accessed 28 March 2024.