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 > Loire, Tours, Orleans and Paris ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Tours, Loire Valley 1826

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Tours, Loire Valley’ 1826
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 10 Verso:
Tours, Loire Valley 1826
D23265
Turner Bequest CCXLIX 10a
Pencil on white laid paper, 103 x 153 mm
Partial watermark of bunch of grapes
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Simphorien’ towards top right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘1391’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled the upper half of this page with drawings of Tours. At the centre of the page can be seen a distant views the ruins of the bridge of Eudes and the Pont de Tours.1 In the upper right-hand corner is a small study of the right bank of the Loire with the Church of Saint-Symphorien. This is one of a substantial number of pages featuring sketches of the city and its environs in this volume, a list of which is provided in the sketchbook introduction. Turner subsequently used these drawings as the basis for multiple colour studies and finished watercolours on blue paper with a view to engraved reproduction; see especially Tate D24712 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 147). These culminated in four printed illustrations for Turner’s Annual Tour: Wanderings by the Loire and Seine (1833–5; later reissued as Rivers of France);2 see Tate impressions T04685–T04688.
1
Ian Warrell, Turner on the Loire, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1997, pp.223, 236.
2
Luke Herrmann, Turner Prints: The Engraved Work of J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 1990, pp.171–83.
Technical notes:
There are dark brown marks in the lower left-hand quadrant.

John Chu
May 2015

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Tours, Loire Valley 1826 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 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-tours-loire-valley-r1185102, accessed 16 May 2024.