Joseph Mallord William Turner

Turner filled the top half of this page with sketches of the sailed barges distinctive to the Loire Valley.1 A semi-legible note at the centre of the page records some manoeuvre of these vessels which Turner evidently found of interest. At the bottom of the page, inverted in relation to the sketches above, are featured distant views of the Benedictine abbey of St-Florent-le-Vieil on its hilltop overlooking the Loire. 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 this location in this volume. A list of these is provided in the sketchbook introduction.