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 ?Fort Napoleon, Ostend 1840

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Fort Napoleon, Ostend’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 5 Recto:
?Fort Napoleon, Ostend 1840
D30468
Turner Bequest CCCIII 5
Pencil on flecked pale blue laid paper, 104 x 170 mm
Partial watermark: Tree of Liberty
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘5’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCCIII – 5’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally, and shows the early nineteenth-century Fort Napoleon or other coastal defences north-east of the mouth of Ostend’s harbour channel; compare folios 1 verso (D30461), 15 verso and 17 verso (D30486, D30488; CCCIII 14a, 16). There is windmill beyond, and the vertical stoke near the centre may indicate the old lighthouse, shown in detail on folio 4 verso opposite (D30467). For numerous Ostend sketches on adjacent pages, marking the end of Turner’s 1840 tour, see under folio 1 recto (D30460).1

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
See also Powell 1995, pp.72, 82 note 71, 246.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘?Fort Napoleon, Ostend 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-fort-napoleon-ostend-r1196228, accessed 19 April 2024.