Lanterne de Démosthène at Saint-Cloud, Île-de-France

1832

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Paris and Environs Sketchbook
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 175 x 127 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D24420
Turner Bequest CCLVII 128 a

Catalogue entry

With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled much of this page with two long views of the riverside landscape around the Château de Saint-Cloud, some seven miles west of central Paris. This location is given away by the description of the ornamental Lanterne de Démosthène in the lower sketch towards the left-hand side of the page, a Napoleonic folly erected within the palace pleasure grounds.1 For the watercolour of the Lanterne which Turner worked up with a view to engraved reproduction around this time, see Tate D24697 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 132). This led to an engraving in the 1835 volume of Turner’s Annual Tour: Wanderings by the Loire and Seine (1833–5; later reissued as Rivers of France); see Tate T05619. A list of pages in the present volume featuring Saint-Cloud is provided in the sketchbook Introduction.

John Chu
January 2015

Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, pp.55, 223–28.

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