Joseph Mallord William Turner

Interior of the ?Collegiate Church at Eu

1845

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Eu and Treport Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite and watercolour on paper
Dimensions
Support: 327 × 231 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D35442
Turner Bequest CCCLIX 7

Catalogue entry

This interior view, composed of liquid ochre, lilac, and indigo washes, is likely to have been taken within the large Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame and St-Laurent at Eu.1 For another such sketch, see D35445 (Turner Bequest CCCLIX 10). Andrew Wilton notes that both these sketches are remarkably similar in manner to comparable Italian subjects worked up over twenty-five years earlier; see Tate D16140 and D16141 (Turner Bequest CLXXXVII 52, 53).2 Distinctive here though are the indented rows of lines to the bottom left of the sheet, perhaps to represent kneeling figures before a brightly shining side chapel to the right.
1
For a contemporary description of the collegiate church, see John Murray (ed.), Hand-Book for Travellers in France, revised ed., London, Paris and Leipzig 1844, pp.66–7.
2
Wilton 1975, pp.160–1.
Verso:
The verso is not available for inspection as the sketch is attached to its mount.

John Chu
February 2014

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