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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > England and Wales Colour Studies c.1825 ... > Studies for Published 'England and ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Kent Coast from Folkestone Harbour to Dover c.1829

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Kent Coast from Folkestone Harbour to Dover’ c.1829
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
The Kent Coast from Folkestone Harbour to Dover c.1829
D25225
Turner Bequest CCLXIII 103
Watercolour on white wove paper, 350 x 510 mm
Watermark ‘Ruse & Turners | 1828’
Inscribed in red ink ‘103’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXIII – 103’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This relatively muted colour study has been proposed by Eric Shanes as the ‘basic colour structure’1 for the setting of the watercolour Folkestone Harbour and Coast to Dover of about 1829 (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven),2 engraved in 1831 for the Picturesque Views in England and Wales (Tate impressions: T04570, T04571).3
David Hill has described the status of Shanes’s identification as ‘not proven or positively dubious’,4 but the fundamental elements of the broad beach and receding cliffs appear to correspond closely, ‘although the sky here is greyer, darker and more clouded’5 and there is, as usual with such ‘colour beginnings’, no sign of the prominent figures engaged in anti-smuggling activities in the foreground of the finished design.6
Shanes has suggested that a colour study with a similar background but a rough sea is a variant design (Tate D36327; Turner Bequest CCCLXV 36). A further work has been proposed as a Folkestone view among other possibilities (Tate D25185; Turner Bequest CCLXIII 63). See also the introductions to the present subsection of identified subjects and the overall England and Wales ‘colour beginnings’ grouping to which this work has been assigned.
1
Shanes 1997, p.21.
2
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.396 no.826, reproduced.
3
Shanes 1997, pp.44, 96, 105.
4
Hill 1997, p.7.
5
Shanes 1997, p.44.
6
Discussed ibid., pp.44–5.
Verso:
Blank; inscribed in pencil ‘AB 93 P | O’ and CCLXIII.103’ bottom right; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram above ‘CCLXIII – 103’ bottom right.

Matthew Imms
March 2013

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Kent Coast from Folkestone Harbour to Dover c.1829 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-kent-coast-from-folkestone-harbour-to-dover-r1144255, accessed 18 April 2024.