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 Distant Views of Ostend 1840

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Distant Views of Ostend’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 9 Verso:
Distant Views of Ostend 1840
D30477
Turner Bequest CCCIII 9a
Pencil on flecked pale blue laid paper, 104 x 170 mm
Partial watermark: Tree of Liberty
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The two drawings were made with the page turned horizontally, and apparently show Ostend,1 with aspects of the wooden piers along outer channel to its harbour, and spires and windmills in the distance. The viewpoint is possibly one of the piers themselves, looking inland to the south-east, with landmarks including the slender lighthouse and the ‘Peperbusse’ tower of the old St Peter’s Church. Jessica Feather has linked the page to the background of a moonlit watercolour now known as A Steamer off Ostend (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight).2 For numerous Ostend sketches marking the end of Turner’s 1840 tour on adjacent pages, related watercolours and a painting, see under folio 1 recto (D30460).

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
See also Powell 1995, p.246.
2
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.469 no.1409, as ‘Yarmouth Roads’, reproduced.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Distant Views of 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-distant-views-of-ostend-r1196237, accessed 26 April 2024.