Joseph Mallord William Turner

Turner filled this page with studies of the riverside terrain of the Loire valley. These scenes have been traced to a surprisingly disparate range of locations.1 Intermixed in the top half of the page are depictions of the settlement of Ancenis and the château at Juigné, located some thirty five miles apart. At the bottom of the page, inverted in relation to the sketches above, is featured the Benedictine abbey of St-Florent-le-Vieil on its hilltop overlooking the Loire. This is situated about eight miles upstream from Ancenis. In subsequent years the artist returned to his sketches of St-Florent-le-Vieil with a view to finding material for engraved reproduction. This resulted in a print in Turner’s Annual Tour: Wanderings by the Loire and Seine (1833–5; later reissued as Rivers of France);2 see Tate impression T06209. There are several pages of studies of each of these subjects in this volume. A list of these is provided in the sketchbook introduction.