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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?Paris from Saint-Cloud, Île-de-France 1832

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 15 Verso:
?Paris from Saint-Cloud, Île-de-France 1832
D23910
Turner Bequest CCLIV 15a
Pencil on white wove paper, 174 x 117 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘mn’, ‘?marsh’ centre
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled the top half of this page with panoramic views across the hills and riverside architecture of the Seine valley from a high vantage. The sketch along the centre of the page features the towers and steeples of a distant city. Although Turner’s handling is too cursory here for the identification of a definite location for these prospects, the neighbouring pages in the volume contain sketches of similar landscapes taken around Saint-Cloud, located some seven miles west of central Paris with impressive views back to the city.1 For comparisons, see examples of the watercolours of the riverside scenery around Saint-Cloud which Turner worked up with a view to engraved reproduction around this time; Tate D24688 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 123), D24689 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 124), and D24697 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 132).

John Chu
July 2014

1
Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, pp.55, 223–8.

How to cite

John Chu, ‘?Paris from Saint-Cloud, Île-de-France 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-paris-from-saint-cloud-le-de-france-r1173315, accessed 29 March 2024.