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 Parish Church of Notre-Dame at Le Havre, Normandy c.1832

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Parish Church of Notre-Dame at Le Havre, Normandy’ c.1832
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
The Parish Church of Notre-Dame at Le Havre, Normandy c.1832
D24816
Turner Bequest CCLIX 251
Gouache and watercolour with pen on blue paper, 140 x 192 mm
Blind-stamped with the Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLIX – 251’ 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 the grand Parish Church at Le Havre, Normandy and its surrounding buildings. Ink has been used to define the crowded hubbub of the foreground while a few dry brush-strokes at the end of the street indicate ships’ masts so as to reveal the town’s maritime character. The existence of the present colour study, based on a pencil sketch in the Seine and Paris sketchbook (Tate D24045; Turner Bequest CCLIV 83) suggests that Turner considered the subject as an illustration for Turner’s Annual Tour: Wanderings by the Loire and Seine (1833–5; later reissued as Rivers of France) although Notre-Dame du Havre did not make it into this publication in the event.1
1
W[illiam] G[eorge] Rawlinson, The Engraved Work of J.M.W. Turner, R.A., London 1908, vol.II, pp.264–76 nos.453–92.
Technical notes:
The verso of this sheet is attached to the mount.

John Chu
July 2014

How to cite

John Chu, ‘The Parish Church of Notre-Dame at Le Havre, Normandy c.1832 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 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-parish-church-of-notre-dame-at-le-havre-normandy-r1173121, accessed 25 April 2024.