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

Inverted in relation to the sketchbook as foliated, the four landscape studies worked into this page depict the rolling hills that line the wide embouchure of the Seine as it opens onto the English Channel. The bottom drawing depicts the harbour of Quillebeuf on its long promontory on the south bank of the river, over which rises the Romanesque tower of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Port.1 The bottom sketch appears to record a view of the same settlement from a greater distance. 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).