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

With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled the top half of this page with a south-westerly view down the Seine as flows past Canteleu, near Rouen. In the top right-hand corner can be glimpsed the main part of Canteleu perched on its plateau on the right bank of the river. The spire rising above the other buildings belongs to the thirteenth-century Church of Saint-Martin. For a watercolour of Canteleu that Turner worked up around this time perhaps with a view to engraved reproduction, see Tate D24643 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 78).