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

With sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled this page with multiple landscape sketches describing the terrain around Château Gaillard on the banks of the Seine, Normandy. The bottom half of the page features a cursory drawing amidst the castle ruins with the landscape unfolding some one hundred metres below. A northerly view back up to the fortifications from the riverbank is included in the top right-hand quadrant, while a mill, with particular attention paid to the description of its waterwheel, appears towards the top left-hand corner.

Of all the Seine valley sights, the landscape around Château Gaillard and the local villages of Les Andelys were the subject of particular study in this sketchbook. For a list of associated sketches in the volume, see the entry for folio 51 verso (D23982; Turner Bequest CCLIV 51a). For the watercolours of this landmark in the Turner Bequest that the artist worked up with a view to engraved reproduction, see Tate D24678 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 113) and D24692 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 127). These culminated in two engravings in the 1835 volume of Turner’s Annual Tour: Wanderings by the Loire and Seine (1833–5; later reissued as Rivers of France); see Tate impressions T04708 and T04709.