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 The Lieutenancy Building and Church of Sainte-Catherine at Honfleur, Normandy c.1832

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Lieutenancy Building and Church of Sainte-Catherine at Honfleur, Normandy’ c.1832
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
The Lieutenancy Building and Church of Sainte-Catherine at Honfleur, Normandy c.1832
D24749
Turner Bequest CCLIX 184
Gouache and watercolour with pen on blue paper, 140 x 193 mm
Blind-stamped with the Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLIX – 184’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner worked gouache and watercolour paints over this ink drawing to depict the busy quayside at Honfleur, Normandy. The wooden spires of the Church of Sainte-Catherine rise up behind the picturesque structure of the port’s Lieutenancy Building which was one of the town’s principal administrative centres. This is one of seven colour studies of Honfleur which Turner worked up around this date with a view to potential publication; these are listed under the entry for Tate D24580 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 15). Art historian Ian Warrell has identified a pencil sketch in the Tancarville and Lillebonne sketchbook as the source for the present study: see Tate D23729 (Turner Bequest CCLIII 16a)1 For the finished watercolour of this subject see Tate D24700 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 135). All this activity culminated in an engraved illustration 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 impression T04707.
1
Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, p.269.
Technical notes:
A margin of darker blue paper around the edges of this sketch indicates damage from prolonged exposure to light. The verso of the sheet is attached to its mount.

John Chu
August 2014

How to cite

John Chu, ‘The Lieutenancy Building and Church of Sainte-Catherine at Honfleur, 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-the-lieutenancy-building-and-church-of-sainte-catherine-at-r1173110, accessed 18 April 2024.