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 > Seine and Paris Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris 1832

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris’ 1832
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 21 Recto:
Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris 1832
D23921
Turner Bequest CCLIV 21
Pencil on white wove paper, 174 x 117 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘21’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLIV – 21’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled much of this page with a view taken at the hillside Père-Lachaise Cemetery some two miles east of central Paris.1 In the foreground are featured the neoclassical tombs typical of this relatively recent foundation (1804) while a panoramic vista of the city faintly stretches off into the distance on the right. The many studies of Père-Lachaise in this sketchbook culminated in an engraved illustration for a new edition of Walter Scott’s Life of Napoleon Buonaparte (1834–6);2 see Tate impression T04744.
A list of pages in the sketchbook featuring Père-Lachaise is provided in the entry for folio 24 verso (D23928; Turner Bequest 24a).

John Chu
July 2014

1
Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, pp.54, 243–6.
2
W[illiam] G[eorge] Rawlinson, The Engraved Work of J.M.W. Turner, R.A., vol.II, London 1908, pp.289–92 nos.530–40.

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris 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-pere-lachaise-cemetery-paris-r1173326, accessed 25 April 2024.