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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Walled Harbour, ?Ostend 1839

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Walled Harbour, ?Ostend’ 1839 (Inside front cover of sketchbook)
Inside front cover of sketchbook
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Inside Front Cover:
A Walled Harbour, ?Ostend 1839
D41216
Pencil on cream laid writing paper, 100 x 156 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘[?F...]’ twice, at bottom right and towards top right
Stamped in black ‘CCXCI’ top left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Making use of the paste-down of the inside front cover of the sketchbook, Turner has produced two rough sketches of walled harbours: one taken from the sea and the other from within the harbour. There are more harbour scenes on the folio opposite (Tate D28538; Turner Bequest CCXCI 1).
The artist may well be depicting the harbour at Ostend, where the General Steam Navigation Company ran a service to back to London every Tuesday and a service to Dover four times a week.1 Turner is believed to have taken the Saturday service to Ostend from London at the beginning of his tour.2
1
John Murray, A Hand-book for Travellers on the Continent: Being a Guide Through Holland, Belgium, Prussia, and Northern Germany and Along the Rhine, from Holland to Switzerland, London 1838, p.xxvii, ‘List of Steam-Boats from England to the Continent’.
2
Cecilia Powell, Turner’s Rivers of Europe: The Rhine, Meuse and Mosel, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1991, p.48.
Technical notes:
The leather loop originally used for fastening the sketchbook or holding a pencil has stained the paper.

Alice Rylance-Watson
August 2013

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘A Walled Harbour, ?Ostend 1839 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-walled-harbour-ostend-r1150820, accessed 12 July 2026.