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 > Paris and Environs Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Les Invalides, Paris 1832

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Les Invalides, Paris’ 1832
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 128 Recto:
Les Invalides, Paris 1832
D24419
Turner Bequest CCLVII 128
Pencil on white laid paper, 175 x 127 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘128’ top left and ‘2’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLVII 128’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled much of this page with studies of the seventeenth-century military complex of Les Invalides in Paris onto this page. The central drawing depicts the façade facing onto the nearby Champs de Mars. Turner made several sketches of the building in the present volume, a list of which is provided in the sketchbook Introduction. The existence these drawings and a watercolour study (Tate D24572; Turner Bequest CCLIX 7) suggests that Turner considered the subject as an illustration for Turner’s Annual Tour: Wanderings by the Loire and Seine (1833–5; later reissued as Rivers of France) or the new edition of Walter Scott’s Life of Napoleon Buonaparte (1834–36) although Les Invalides did not make it into either publication in the event.1

John Chu
January 2015

1
W[illiam] G[eorge] Rawlinson, The Engraved Work of J.M.W. Turner, R.A., London 1908, . vol.II, pp.264–76 nos.453–92, 288–92 nos.525–39.

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Les Invalides, Paris 1832 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2015, 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-les-invalides-paris-r1175447, accessed 25 April 2024.