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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Northern France 1832 > Guernsey Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Coastal Buildings with a Windmill, ?Channel Islands ?1832

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Coastal Buildings with a Windmill, ?Channel Islands’ ?1832
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 1 Recto:
Coastal Buildings with a Windmill, ?Channel Islands ?1832
D23525
Turner Bequest CCLII 1
Pencil, watercolour, and chalk on white wove paper, 114 x 187 mm
Partial watermark ‘YMAN | 28’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘1’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLII – 1’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner prepared this page with a grey watercolour wash and, to the left of the page, commenced a sketch of some coastal buildings surmounted by a windmill. A small patch of white chalk towards the top left-hand corner suggests that the artist was considering heightening the scene in the manner seen on folio 2 recto (D23527; Turner Bequest CCLII 2). Towards the right-hand side of the page, a distant tower is depicted, possibly locating this scene at St Sampson Harbour to the east of Guernsey, which was defended by several of the island’s distinctive eighteenth-century ‘loophole’ forts.1

John Chu
April 2014

1
W.H. Clements, Towers of Strength: the story of the Martello towers, Barnsley 1999, p.85.

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Coastal Buildings with a Windmill, ?Channel Islands ?1832 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 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-coastal-buildings-with-a-windmill-channel-islands-r1175017, accessed 25 April 2024.