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

With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled this page with a view down towards a bay from high cliffs. Special attention has been paid to the way the landscape recedes in stages from the rocky masses of the foreground, past the buildings by the shoreline, towards the rolling countryside beyond. Art historian Ian Warrell has identified this and neighbouring sketches in the volume as depictions of the coastal hinterlands around Le Havre where the Seine debouches into the English Channel. A more precise location may be suggested by the fact that, in its broad outlines, this landscape is comparable with a more detailed sketch of Le Havre viewed from the suburb of Sainte-Addresse in the Guernsey sketchbook (Tate D23597; Turner Bequest CCLII 41). A list of pages in the sketchbook featuring Le Havre and Cap de la Hève is provided in the entry for folio 48 recto (D23975; Turner Bequest CCLIV 48).