Joseph Mallord William Turner

With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled the top half of this page with a view of the medieval town of Provins, located some fifty miles south-east of Paris. Studies of the twelfth-century Tour César and the Church of Saint-Quiriace have been included in the in the centre of the scene. Most of the pages in this volume are taken up with sketches working towards illustrations for Turner’s Annual Tour: Wanderings by the Loire and Seine (1833–5; later reissued as Rivers of France) and a new edition of Walter Scott’s Life of Napoleon Buonaparte (1834–36) although Provins featured in nether publication in the event. A list of pages in the present sketchbook featuring Provins is provided in the sketchbook Introduction.