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 > Boulogne Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Beach with a Tower and Windmill ?near Boulogne 1845

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Beach with a Tower and Windmill ?near Boulogne’ 1845
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 8 Recto:
A Beach with a Tower and Windmill ?near Boulogne 1845
D35411
Turner Bequest CCCLVIII 9
Gouache, pencil and watercolour on white wove paper, 230 x 326 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘9’ bottom right
Blind stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCLVIII 9’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This littoral scene presents beach, cliff, and sky as horizontal bands reinforced and further simplified by broad, light washes of colour. In the lower register an expanse of sand is represented by a more or less uniform layer of watery ochre while the presence of the sea is indicated by a wedge of reserved paper. Above this, the zone between beach and dry land is blurred by a belt of angled stokes in fresh blue, perhaps to suggest a sea mist. The horizon and sky are washed over in a single wash of slightly greener blue with small patch of blue ‘dropped in’ to emphasise the presence of a tower.
Verso:
Blank

John Chu
November 2013

How to cite

John Chu, ‘A Beach with a Tower and Windmill ?near Boulogne 1845 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 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-a-beach-with-a-tower-and-windmill-near-boulogne-r1173512, accessed 24 April 2024.