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 Quillebeuf, Normandy 1832

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Quillebeuf, Normandy’ 1832
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 77 Recto:
Quillebeuf, Normandy 1832
D24033
Turner Bequest CCLIV 77
Pencil on white wove paper, 174 x 117 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘77’ top left, inverted
Stamped in black ink ‘CCLIV – 77’ top right, inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted in relation to the sketchbook as foliated, the study at the top of this page depicts the harbour of Quillebeuf on its long promontory on the south bank of the Seine. The tower rising above the cluster of buildings at the centre of the scene belongs to the Romanesque Church of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Port.1 With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner also worked a wide landscape view of high riverside hills.
For watercolours of Quillebeuf worked up by Turner with a view to engraved reproduction around this time, see Tate D24576 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 11), D24668 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 103), and D24729 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 164). These culminated in the exhibition of a major oil piece on the subject, The Mouth of the Seine, Quille-Boeuf, (Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon)2 at the Royal Academy in 1833, and also in an engraving in the 1834 volume of Turner’s Annual Tour: Wanderings by the Loire and Seine (1833–5; later reissued as Rivers of France); see Tate impression T05598. A list of pages in the sketchbook featuring views of Quillebeuf is provided in the entry for folio 77 verso (D24034; Turner Bequest CCLIV 77a).

John Chu
July 2014

1
Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, p.36.
2
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.184–5, no.353, pl.332.

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Quillebeuf, Normandy 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-quillebeuf-normandy-r1173438, accessed 26 April 2024.