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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Kent Coast and Whaling c.1844-5 > Ideas of Folkestone Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Folkestone Pier in Stormy Weather 1845

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Folkestone Pier in Stormy Weather’ 1845 (Inside back cover of sketchbook)
Inside back cover of sketchbook
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Inside Back Cover:
Folkestone Pier in Stormy Weather 1845
D35385
Turner Bequest CCCLVI 24
Watercolour on white wove paper, 230 x 328 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘24’ bottom right
Blind stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCLVI–24’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
In much the same vein as the watercolour on folio 1 recto (D35361), Turner depicts the Folkestone coastline in the midst of a storm. The sombre sky and sea is rendered in shades of grey wash applied with dry-brush technique to expose the grain of the paper. The obscure profile of a headland painted on saturated paper in charcoal grey has been blurred by subsequent vertical applications of wash, lending it a fittingly distorted, murky appearance.

Alice Rylance-Watson
February 2013

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Folkestone Pier in Stormy Weather 1845 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, June 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-folkestone-pier-in-stormy-weather-r1142163, accessed 18 April 2024.