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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Northern France 1832 > Loose Studies of Paris and the Seine > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner An Avenue of Trees at Tancarville, Normandy c.1832

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘An Avenue of Trees at Tancarville, Normandy’ c.1832
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
An Avenue of Trees at Tancarville, Normandy c.1832
D24737
Turner Bequest CCLIX 172
Gouache and watercolour on blue paper, 142 x 189 mm
Blind-stamped with the Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLIX 172’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner worked gouache and watercolour paints onto this sheet of blue paper to depict a curving avenue of trees on a hillside. Art historian Ian Warrell has identified the location of this scene as Tancarville in Normandy and the expanse of water glimpsed between the tree trunks as the Seine’s wide embouchure.1 This is one of five colour studies of Tancarville which Turner worked up around this date with a view to potential publication; for a list of these see the entry for Tate D24595 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 30). Warrell identified a pencil sketch in the earlier Tancarville and Lillebonne sketchbook as a source for the present study: see Tate D23721 (Turner Bequest CCLIII 12).2 For the finished watercolours see Tate D24693 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 128) and Tate D24695 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 130). All this activity culminated in two engraved illustrations for the 1834 volume of Turner’s Annual Tour: Wanderings by the Loire and Seine (1833–5; later reissued as Rivers of France); see Tate impressions T04701 and T05597.
1
Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, p.270.
2
Ibid.
Technical notes:
The verso of this sheet is attached to the mount.

John Chu
August 2014

How to cite

John Chu, ‘An Avenue of Trees at Tancarville, Normandy c.1832 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-an-avenue-of-trees-at-tancarville-normandy-r1173103, accessed 25 April 2024.