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 Architectural Details; ?Names of Revolutionary Figures 1832

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Architectural Details; ?Names of Revolutionary Figures’ 1832
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 29 Recto:
Architectural Details; ?Names of Revolutionary Figures 1832
D23937
Turner Bequest CCLIV 29
Pencil on white wove paper, 174 x 117 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘N19’ centre left, inverted, and several names, inverted (see main entry)
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘29’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLIV – 29’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner cursorily recorded several architectural details towards the top left-hand corner of this page. The curving voussoirs of an arch can be made out, and also the top half of an Ionic column. Inverted in relation to these drawings are a series of names, scattered across the left-hand side of the page. Though most of these are indecipherable or semi-decipherable, art historian Ian Warrell spotted the name ‘Tallien’ amongst them, referring to the Revolutionary agitator and politician, Jean-Lambert Tallien. This part of the volume includes several pages of drawings of Paris which Turner made with a view to a new illustrated edition of Walter Scott’s Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, so these notes may have made with this venture in mind.1

John Chu
July 2014

1
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, ‘Architectural Details; ?Names of Revolutionary Figures 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-architectural-details-names-of-revolutionary-figures-r1173342, accessed 25 April 2024.