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

Here Turner has filled this page with an array of sketches and notes: records of the streets and people at the port of Dieppe where the artist stayed for two days towards the very end of the 1824 tour. Though many of the inscriptions are illegible to this cataloguer, the clearest seem to describe a group of three ‘Postillions’ at top right, one wearing a ‘Blue’ tunic with ‘Red edges’ and cuffs, a woman wearing a traditional ‘Red cap’, and what appears to be a list of drinks consumable at a local ‘Caffe’: ‘Vin & Absinthe’, ‘Vin [...] et Bon’ (possibly to express ‘le vin est bon’/ ‘the wine is good’), ‘[Ver] d’Eau’ (‘un verre d’eau’/ ‘a glass of water’). Turner’s annotations are fully transcribed at the start of this record.

For other views of Dieppe in this sketchbook see Tate D19959, D19966, D19968–D19989, D19991–D20014, D20031–D20033; Turner Bequest CCXVI 205, 209a, 211–223a, 224a–236, 244a–245a.