Joseph Mallord William Turner

Turner filled much of this page with multiple landscape views, with all but the top drawing inverted in relation to the sketchbook as foliated. At the top and bottom edges of the page can be seen the Romanesque tower of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Port at Quillebeuf in the wide embouchure of the Seine.1 For examples of the watercolour studies of Quillebeuf worked up by Turner around this time, see Tate D24576 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 11), D24668 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 103), and D24729 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 164). These culminated in the exhibition of a major oil piece on the subject, The Mouth of the Seine, Quille-Boeuf (Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon) at the Royal Academy in 1833,2 and also in an engraving in the 1834 volume of Turner’s Annual Tour: Wanderings by the Loire and Seine (1833–5; later reissued as Rivers of France); see Tate impression T05598.