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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Würzburg, Rhine and Ostend Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Lighthouse at Ostend, with the Town in the Distance 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Lighthouse at Ostend, with the Town in the Distance’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 4 Verso:
The Lighthouse at Ostend, with the Town in the Distance 1840
D30467
Turner Bequest CCCIII 4a
Pencil on flecked pale blue laid paper, 104 x 170 mm
Partial watermark: Tree of Liberty
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘3’ top centre, ‘2’ bottom centre, and ‘[?La...]’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally, showing the lighthouse (since replaced) overlooking the harbour channel north-east of Ostend, seen in the distance with the spire of the old St Peter’s Church (the ‘Peperbusse’) and a windmill. Turner ran out of space at the top of the slender tower, drawing a separate detail of its lantern to the left. The sketch at the top right may be a continuation to the right, showing the old east pier. The numbers ‘2’ and ‘3’ are in sequence with a ‘1’ on the recto (D30466).
Niamh Mac Nally has noted this page in relation to a watercolour now known as Ostend Harbour (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin),1 which shows the lighthouse and a nearby windmill against a sunset sky.2 For other watercolours and the numerous Ostend views on adjacent pages of this sketchbook, marking the end of Turner’s 1840 tour, see under folio 1 recto (D30460).3

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.469 no.1408, as ‘Yarmouth’, reproduced.
2
See Mac Nally 2012, p.60.
3
See also Powell 1995, pp.72, 82 note 71, 246.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Lighthouse at Ostend, with the Town in the Distance 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-lighthouse-at-ostend-with-the-town-in-the-distance-r1196227, accessed 10 May 2024.