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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Tomb of Louis-Gabriel Suchet at Père-Lachaise, Paris 1832

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 25 Recto:
Tomb of Louis-Gabriel Suchet at Père-Lachaise, Paris 1832
D23929
Turner Bequest CCLIV 25
Pencil on white wove paper, 174 x 117 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘marshal Suchet | Duc de albafera’ bottom centre
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘25’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLIV – 25’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled this page with a view taken at the hillside Père-Lachaise Cemetery some two miles east of central Paris.1 Special attention has been paid to the neoclassical tombs typical of this relatively recent foundation (1804), with the sarcophagus of the Napoleonic war hero, Louis-Gabriel Suchet, rising above the others on a high plinth. Turner has transcribed the inscription on the monument at the bottom of the page, recording Suchet’s office as Marshal of France and his entitlement to the Dukedom of Albufera. 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, ‘Tomb of Louis-Gabriel Suchet at Père-Lachaise, 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-tomb-of-louis-gabriel-suchet-at-pere-lachaise-paris-r1173334, accessed 28 March 2024.