This post is about two paintings of Dieppe painted by JMW Turner and John Sell Cotman at more or less the same time - give or take a year! It also covers the concept of staffage and how to access Turner's sketchbooks
You can see both paintings - hung next to one another in Cotman in Normandy - the new exhibition of watercolour paintings, drawings and etchings by John Sell Cotman at Dulwich Picture Gallery.
The Cotman painting was definitely produced in his studio and the Turner was either painted on a loose leaf of watercolour paper while in Dieppe or was worked up as a colour study from his sketchbook. They neatly contrast the different approaches and styles of the two artists when faced with the identical view. (See my Review: Cotman in Normandy - at Dulwich Picture Gallery on Making A Mark for the explanation of why all Cotman landscapes were done in his studio.)
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| Dieppe from the heights to the East of the port (1823) by John Sell Cotman Graphite and watercolour with pen and ink and scratching out of the paper Victoria and Albert Museum |
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| Dieppe from the East (?) (1826-7) by JMW Turner Graphite and watercolour on paper Turner Bequest |
Turner's 1826 French tour began at Dieppe towards the end of August. His first sketchbook (no.5) includes only a general view of the town of the kind he had already noted two years earlier. But it seems that he also made some sketches on loose sheets of paper. On these he again recorded the quaysides, which had formed the subject of his large oil painting of 1825 (Frick Collection, New York)Interestingly the description of the work in the exhibition indicates that this watercolour was probably developed from the 1821 sketchbook and produced as part of an unrealised sceheme to represent both sides of the Channel.
