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 Verso:
Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris 1832
D23922
Turner Bequest CCLIV 21a
Pencil on white wove paper, 174 x 117 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘R[...]d [...]’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled this page with studies taken at the hillside Père-Lachaise Cemetery some two miles east of central Paris.1 On the right-hand side of the page are featured the neoclassical tombs typical of this relatively recent foundation (1804) while a panoramic vista of the city stretches off into the distance at the top. The two western towers of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame can be made out towards the top left-hand corner. Circles towards the bottom right-hand corner suggest groups of figures, possibly gathered to visit the tombs of famous Napoleonic generals at the cemetery. 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); 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.

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-r1173327, accessed 24 April 2024.