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

Inverted in relation to the sketchbook as foliated, the landscape view at the bottom of this page depicts a riverside terrain of hills and buildings. Art historian Ian Warrell has identified this as one of the empty pages remaining towards the end of the 1832 Seine tour which Turner subsequently used for sketches of the Marne valley near Paris.1 Certainly the note at the bottom of the page locates the scene somewhere along its banks. One of the towns depicted in this area on this trip was Saint-Maur-des-Fossés; for a comparison, see folio 91 verso (D24062; Turner Bequest CCLIV 91a). The sketch that fills the top half of the page is more cursory and appears to depict tall trees or perhaps high rocks below which figures are assembled.