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

With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled much of this page with a wide view of the Seine with Paris in the distance. Boats are arranged haphazardly in the foreground, presumably grounded on the riverbank, while the dome of Les Invalides or the Panthéon rises above the horizon line. Although the foreground is too cursorily drawn to identify a definite location, the neighbouring pages in the volume contain drawings of similar landscapes taken around Saint-Cloud, located some seven miles west of central Paris.1 For comparisons, the list of views taken in that vicinity in this sketchbook under the entry for folio 17 verso (D23914; Turner Bequest CCLIV 17a).