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

The small sketches that fill this page depict a terrain of riverside hills punctuated by rows of trees and buildings. Turner’s scrawled note towards the centre of the page, reading ‘Canu [...]ty’, suggest that these drawings were made taken at Canteleu to the west of Rouen. The spire rising above the brow of the hill just above this note presumably belongs therefore to the Church of Saint-Martin on the plateau of that settlement. For a comparison, see the watercolour of Canteleu that Turner worked up around this time perhaps with a view to engraved reproduction; Tate D24643 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 78).