The Château of Dieppe and the Prison, Normandy, seen from the beach

Cotman arrived in Dieppe on 20 July 1817. His Norfolk patron, Dawson Turner, had arranged a letter of introduction to a botanist and customs official named Gaillon, who acted as a guide for Cotman around Dieppe. Over the next four days he sketched the castle, port and church of St Jacques - a magnificent drawing of which is in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. In a letter to Dawson Turner Cotman wrote 'Today I have drawn the Castle from two points'. These characteristic brown wash drawings were intermediary stages in the preparation of the published etchings worked up from on the spot drawings. The Architectural Antiquities of Normandy in which the present drawing appeared, was Cotman's most ambitious publishing project for which he executed several hundred drawings in the course of three tours of Normandy, in 1817, 1818 and 1820.