Joseph Mallord William Turner The Seine at Paris and Rouen 1821
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 26 Recto:
The Seine at Paris and Rouen 1821
D24549
Turner Bequest CCLVIII 26
Turner Bequest CCLVIII 26
Pencil on white wove paper, 123 x 118 mm
Stamped in black ‘CCLVIII – 26’ top right running vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLVIII – 26’ top right running vertically
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.788, CCLVIII 26, as ‘Pont Neuf, Paris: also sketches on the river.’.
1981
Maurice Guillaud, Nicholas Alfrey, Andrew Wilton and others, Turner in France: Watercolours, Paintings, Drawings, Engravings, Sketchbooks, exhibition catalogue, Centre Culturel du Marais, Paris 1981, p.161 fig.280 as ‘Paris: Pont Neuf’.
1999
Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, pp.21, 253 note 50, 268 under no.54.
This page contains five sketches on the Seine at Paris and Rouen.1 At the top of the page is a quick sketch of the flanks of the Louvre, with the Pont de la Concorde beyond. A figure in a boat in the foreground may be in the process of tying up his boat to the river bank. The sketch beneath looks east along the Seine from the Pont des Arts to the Pont Neuf with the Île de la Cité and Notre Dame Cathedral. For a list of Turner sketches of Paris in this sketchbook, see folio 3 verso (Tate D24505; Turner Bequest CCLVIII 3a).
Across the centre of the page are two sketches of boats. The first, inscribed ‘below at Rouen’, pays particular attention to a group of figures in distinctive Normandy hats, while the second depicts a moored boat with a gangplank connecting it to a riverbank, presumably near Rouen. There is a windmill on the hill above the river to the right. The bottom sketch depicts the left bank of the river with the Grand Cours in the Faubourg St Sever in the distance. The shore is crowded with boats and boating paraphernalia. Ian Warrell has suggested that this sketch may have provided the composition (though without the tower) of Turner’s oil sketch: Rouen; The Left Bank or Honfleur: The Tour Ronde, with Shipping beyond, ?1827–8 (Tate N03383).2 As it was more usual for Turner to begin sketching at the top of a page and work down, it is likely that the Paris views were made before those at Rouen, suggesting that the latter were made on his return to Rouen where he boarded a boat that took him along the Seine to Le Havre.3 For all of Turner’s sketches at Rouen, see folio 1 (Tate D24500; Turner Bequest CCLVIII 1).
Thomas Ardill
February 2013
How to cite
Thomas Ardill, ‘The Seine at Paris and Rouen 1821 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2014, https://www