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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner Cliffs at Folkestone 1845

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Cliffs at Folkestone’ 1845
Folio 14 Recto:
Cliffs at Folkestone 1845
D35287
Turner Bequest CCCLIV 14
Pencil on white wove paper, 72 x 111 mm
Inscribed in red ink ‘14’ bottom
Stamped in black ‘CCCLIV – 14’ bottom right
The swiftly-drawn sketch across the centre of this page continues from folio 13 verso opposite (D35286) and depicts the profile of the Leas Cliff at Folkestone from the west, identifiable by the tower of the Church of St Mary and St Eanswythe perched dramatically atop it. This same view features in Turner’s Folkestone sketchbook of about 1821 (Tate D17235, D17252; Turner Bequest CXCVIII 17 and 27a), as well as the watercolour Folkestone, Kent (Taft Museum, Cincinnati),1 engraved by Robert Wallis in 1826 for Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England (Tate impressions: T05254, T05997), A watercolour sketch of this view appears in the Ideas of Folkestone sketchbook, also dated 1845 (Tate D35370; Turner Bequest CCCLXI 10).
A detail from a window is the possible subject of the sketch on the lower register of the page while at the top is another profile of cliffs, drawn inverted in relation to the other sketches, possibly of Folkestone from a more easterly viewpoint.

Amy Concannon
May 2025

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.355 no.480, as c.1823, reproduced.

How to cite

Amy Concannon, ‘Cliffs at Folkestone 1845’, catalogue entry, May 2025, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, July 2026, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/cliffs-at-folkestone-r1214197, accessed 11 July 2026.