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

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

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Jetties at Dieppe Harbour 1845

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Jetties at Dieppe Harbour’ 1845
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 4 Recto:
The Jetties at Dieppe Harbour 1845
D35463
Turner Bequest CCCLX 5
Gouache and watercolour on white wove paper, 232 x 332 mm
Watermarked ‘J WHATMAN TURKEY MILL 1844’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘5’ top left, upside down
Blind stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCLX 5’ top left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This brown and ochre watercolour sketch, achieved without an underlying pencil drawing, depicts the view from the banks of Dieppe’s port channel up the western jetty. The dark brown structure with sloping walls towards the centre of the page may be part of the defunct batterie system that still punctuated the long beach stretching west from this point.1 In the distance, in pale ochre, can be seen the harbour lighthouse on the western shore, and the long eastern jetty extending in from the right-hand side.2
For reasons set out in the Technical notes in the sketchbook Introduction, this work appears inverted in relation to the volume as foliated.
1
Simonia Pakenham, Sixty Miles from England: The English at Dieppe, 1814–1914, London 1967, p.40.
2
For the history of Dieppe’s harbour infrastructure, see Jacques Bialek, Évolution du Port de Dieppe du XVIIe Siècle à nos Jours, Dieppe 1996.
Verso:
Blank; except for small patches of blue and grey watercolour transferred from folio 5 recto opposite (D35464; Turner Bequest CCCLX 6).

John Chu
February 2014

How to cite

John Chu, ‘The Jetties at Dieppe Harbour 1845 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2014, 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-jetties-at-dieppe-harbour-r1173559, accessed 25 April 2024.