Many of the sketches within this sketchbook are very rough and hasty, having been drawn from a moving vehicle or in challenging conditions. This drawing, however, is an unusually detailed and precise study indicating that Turner devoted a good deal of time and care to it. The subject is the cathedral at Beauvais (Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Beauvais), a city in the Oise region of France, approximately fifty miles north of Paris.
1 Begun during the thirteenth century, the striking Gothic building was never finished and unusually lacks a nave and a steeple.
Turner’s viewpoint for the sketch is to the south-east of the cathedral, from the square known as the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville. The area contained a number of historic houses dating from as early as the twelfth century, and visible on the right-hand side is the Maison de Trois Piliers (House of the Three Pillars), a thirteenth-century house notable for its decorated columns. During the nineteenth century, the house was an inn (Aux Trois Piliers) and was recommended by guide books as a good location for an interior view of Beauvais and the cathedral.
2 Many artists chose to depict the same vista as recorded here by Turner.
3 However, like much of the city the house was destroyed by bombardment during the Second World War.
The study is the only drawing within this sketchbook devoted to a location north of Paris.
Nicola Moorby
February 2013
