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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Spring Tour of Northern France 1845 > Ambleteuse and Wimereux Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Tour de Croy at Wimereuex Sketched from Ambleteuse 1845

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Tour de Croy at Wimereuex Sketched from Ambleteuse’ 1845
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
The Tour de Croy at Wimereuex Sketched from Ambleteuse 1845
D35394
Turner Bequest CCCLVII 9
Pencil and watercolour on paper, 239 x 335 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Ambletuze’ [sic] towards bottom left
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘9’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCLVII 9’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
As in the following and preceding two works as originally constituted in the sketchbook (D35392, D25393, D35395; Turner Bequest CCCLVII 7, 8, 10), Turner here attempts to catch the effect of a low sun reflected on the sea. The artist inscribed this sketch ‘Ambletuze’ [sic], although it more precisely represents the view from Ambleteuse back to Wimereux, several miles south back down the coast. Between a richly coloured sky and the green-blue washes of the sea can be seen the eighteenth-century Tour de Croy, ‘dropped in’ on the horizon with dark green paint. This defensive structure, built to repel the English during the Seven Years’ War, was located on a rocky reef at some distance off the mainland at Wimereux.1 Turner sketched this fort on two or three other occasions during this tour in the present sketchbook (D35387; Turner Bequest CCCLVII 2) and in the Boulogne sketchbook (Tate D35406, D35414; Turner Bequest CCCLVIII 4, 12).
1
Pierre-André Wimet, ‘Un vestige boulonnais de la Guerre de Sept ans – La tour de Croy, à Wimereux’, Bulletin de la Commission Départementale des Monuments Historiques du Pas-de-Calais, vol.6, no.1, 1935, pp.418–22.
Verso:
Blank; the sheet was not available for inspection out of its frame at the time of cataloguing.

John Chu
December 2013

How to cite

John Chu, ‘The Tour de Croy at Wimereuex Sketched from Ambleteuse 1845 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-tour-de-croy-at-wimereuex-sketched-from-ambleteuse-r1173493, accessed 19 April 2024.