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

With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled much of this page with a view of the gardens and palace of Versailles, located some twelve miles south-west of central Paris. The foreground is made up of small pleasure boats floating on the Grand Canal while, in the background, the multiple terraces which make up the Grande Perspective ascend to the building’s long western façade. Turner made numerous sketches of the palace in the present volume, a list of which is provided in the sketchbook Introduction. The existence of so many studies suggests that Turner considered Versailles as a subject for an illustration for a new edition of Walter Scott’s Life of Napoleon Buonaparte (1834–36) although it was not included in the publication in the event.1