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

This is a sketch of Brighton, taken from the beginning of the Chain Pier. Turner pictures the Albion Hotel on the beachfront, the Chain Pier Toll House with a waterwheel next to it, and Brill’s Bathhouse, a circular domed building nicknamed ‘the bunion’, beyond.1 Art Historian Ian Warrell writes that the presence of the waterwheel in this sketch is key in determining the date of Turner’s visit to Brighton: the artist could not have seen the waterwheel after November 1824 because of the violent storms that swept it away.

At top left there is a jotting which Turner has inscribed ‘[?Platform] of C[hain] Pier’.

For further sketches of Brighton in this book see Tate D18343–D18350, D18353–D18365, D18369–D18371; Turner Bequest CCX 20a–23a, 25a–33a, 35a–36a. See also Tate D22773; Turner Bequest CCXLIV 111 and N01986, N02064, T03886, T04421. See also Turner’s design Brighthelmstone, produced for Cooke’s Picturesque Views of the Southern Coast of England and published in 1825 (Tate impression T05289 and Tate D18469; Turner Bequest CCX 88).