Joseph Mallord William Turner

Houses on a Quayside, Le Havre

?1829

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Not on display

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Tancarville and Lillebonne Sketchbook
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 107 × 156 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D23745
Turner Bequest CCLIII 24 a

Catalogue entry

The page contains a sketch, drawn horizontally, of buildings on a quayside. Finberg noted it as ‘Houses on quay’,1 but the location has been identified further as Le Havre.2 Turner provides sufficient detail of the rounded and studded shape of the tower at the left of the building at centre of the sketch for the structure to be identifiable as the Tower of François I. (For further information on the tower, see under folio 7 verso; D23712.)

Furthermore, as art historian Ian Warrell mentions,3 there is text at the bottom right of the sketch which is indistinct but could read ‘Hotel des Indes’, the name of a hotel in Le Havre,4 possibly where Turner took accommodation.

Caroline South
May 2017

Finberg 1909, II, p.769.

?Ian Warrell, ‘Turner on the Seine: Topographical Index’, c.1999, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain (printout in copy of Warrell 1999), p.3.

Warrell 1999, pp.38, 97, 254 note 130, 259 note 11.

A.M. de St. Amand, Lettres d’un Voyageur, a L’Embouchure de la Seine, Paris 1828, p.47, www.gallica.bnf.fr, accessed 28 February 2017, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k352230/f54.item.r=hotel%20des%20indes%20.

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