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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Meuse-Mosel, Luxembourg and Northern ... > Rivers Meuse and Moselle Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Two Distant Views of Ostend; Sky Studies 1824

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Two Distant Views of Ostend; Sky Studies’ 1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 181 Recto:
Two Distant Views of Ostend; Sky Studies 1824
D19901
Turner Bequest CCXVI 175
Pencil on white wove paper, 118 x 78 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘[?Tumbrel] Cart [...] of and for [...] and [?sails] and [?cover] [?them] half or whole [...] the Cloth of the [...] top; ‘Red’ centre left towards top; ‘rays Blue | [?rather] green | yellow’ centre left; ‘[...] yellow’ bottom left; ‘red the only trace of warm color’ bottom
Inscribed in blue ink by Ruskin ‘175’ top right and ‘[?1443]’ bottom right ascending
Stamped in black ‘CCXVI–175’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This leaf bears an array of cursory sketches depicting the port of Ostend at a distance as well as two sky studies. These views were recorded on Turner’s approach to that Flemish city on 7 September 1824 (see also Tate D19898–D19900; Turner Bequest CCXVI 173a–174a). In both prospects of Ostend windmills and towers can be seen, including one with a distinctly conical shaped spire belonging to the Peperbusse, or St Peter’s Tower. The sky studies are paired with roughly dashed off annotations, such as: ‘red the only trace of warm colour’ and ‘rays’ [of light] blue’. There is also a tiny sketch of a long wooden cart and what appears to be a scallop shell at the upper register. Turner has inscribed an almost illegible note next to these diminutive jottings which may describe the cart in some way. This cataloguer has been able to transcribe the following: ‘[?Tumbrel] Cart [...] of and for [...] and [?sails] and [?cover] [?them] half or whole [...] the Cloth of the [...]’.
Finberg catalogued this leaf and its verso: Tate D19902; Turner Bequest CCXVI 175a as ‘Missing’ in his 1909 Inventory.1

Alice Rylance-Watson
June 2014

1
Finberg 1909, vol.II, p.676.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Two Distant Views of Ostend; Sky Studies 1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 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-two-distant-views-of-ostend-sky-studies-r1174696, accessed 26 April 2024.