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 Châtelet Fountain, Paris 1832

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Châtelet Fountain, Paris’ 1832
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 160 Verso:
Châtelet Fountain, Paris 1832
D24482
Turner Bequest CCLVII 160a
Pencil on white laid paper, 175 x 127 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled this page with studies of the monumental architecture and bridges of Paris. Prominent on the left-hand side of the page is Napoleon’s columnar Châtelet Fountain, located on right bank of the Seine. Art historian Ian Warrell has identified this drawing as the basis for a subsequent colour study of the fountain (Tate D24602;
Turner Bequest CCLIX 37).1 The existence of these studies 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 the monument did not make it into either publication in the event.2

John Chu
January 2015

1
Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, p.272.
2
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, ‘Châtelet Fountain, 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-chatelet-fountain-paris-r1175510, accessed 20 April 2024.