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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Northern France c.1826-32 > Nantes, Angers and Saumur Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Woman in Local Costume; Shipping, Loire Valley 1826

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Woman in Local Costume; Shipping, Loire Valley’ 1826
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 17 Verso:
Woman in Local Costume; Shipping, Loire Valley 1826
D23184
Turner Bequest CCXLVIII 17a
Pencil on white laid paper, 170 x 110 mm
Partial unidentified watermark
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Gr’ top left, ‘Yell’ top right, descending vertically, ‘Cargo covered with Mats and Cloths’ left centre
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘31’ bottom left, inverted, ‘355’ top left invert
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner worked a figure of a woman in local dress of the Loire Valley at the top of this page. Inverted in relation to the sketchbook as foliated, the drawings at the bottom of the page depict steamboats. Tate curator Ian Warrell has suggested that these vessels could be the Loire orthe Maine which ran a service along the river around Nantes and Angers.1 With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled much of the rest of page with drawings of the sailed barges distinctive to the Loire.2 Turner subsequently used local rivercraft to enliven his views of the river which he worked up for printed reproduction in The Keepsake annual (1831) and Turner’s Annual Tour: Wanderings by the Loire and Seine (1833–5; later reissued as Rivers of France).3 For examples, see Tate impressions T05107 and T04689.

John Chu
April 2015

1
Ian Warrell, Turner on the Loire, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1997, p. 65.
2
Ibid., pp. 64–7.
3
Luke Herrmann, Turner Prints: The Engraved Work of J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 1990, pp. 164–6, 171–83.

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Woman in Local Costume; Shipping, Loire Valley 1826 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-woman-in-local-costume-shipping-loire-valley-r1185016, accessed 23 April 2024.