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 Lighthouse ?at Dieppe 1845

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Lighthouse ?at Dieppe’ 1845
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 15 Recto:
The Lighthouse ?at Dieppe 1845
D35474
Turner Bequest CCCLX 16
Gouache and watercolour on white wove paper, 232 x 332 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in faded red ink ‘16’ top left, upside down
Blind stamped with the Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCLX 16’ top left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
To rich colouristic effect, this sketch shows a lighthouse, presumably the one at Dieppe harbour,1 lit up against a stormy or, as Finberg thought, evening sky.2 The churning, yellowy-grey sea and the impression of disturbance in the sky’s mixture of wet and dry lead-grey brush-work evoke a distinctive littoral meteorology.

For reasons set out in the Technical notes in the sketchbook Introduction, this work appears inverted in relation to the volume as foliated.
1
For the history of Dieppe’s harbour infrastructure, see Jacques Bialek, Évolution du Port de Dieppe du XVIIe Siècle à nos Jours, Dieppe 1996.
2
Finberg 1909, vol.II, p.1170.
Verso:
Blank; except for patches of watercolour transference and brush-strokes continued from folio 16 recto opposite (D35475; Turner Bequest CCCLX 17).

John Chu
February 2014

How to cite

John Chu, ‘The Lighthouse ?at Dieppe 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-lighthouse-at-dieppe-r1173570, accessed 23 April 2024.