Joseph Mallord William Turner

Quayside Landscapes, Le Havre

?1829

Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)

License this image

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: D23714
Turner Bequest CCLIII 8 a

Catalogue entry

The page contains two sketches, drawn horizontally, of buildings and a bastion along the coast, with higher ground indicated in the background. Finberg recorded these sketches as ‘Houses on quay, &c.’;1 however, the location of Le Havre has been confirmed.2 Art historian Ian Warrell mentions 3 that this page and folio 9 recto opposite (D23715) relate to Turner’s later watercolour The Porte Royale at Le Havre, Normandy, c.1832 (Tate D24746; Turner Bequest CCLIX 181).

Turner records the shapes of buildings, including a tower right of centre in the upper sketch, and also seems to loosely indicate the masts and rigging of a ship on the far left of the bottom sketch. The lower sketch in addition depicts buildings nested atop the higher ground at centre right. The lower sketch may be a continuation of the upper panorama.

Caroline South
May 2017

Finberg 1909, II, p.768.

?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, p.269 no.65.

Read full Catalogue entry