Joseph Mallord William Turner

Drawn with the sketchbook turned to the left, this detailed architectural and street-scene sketch depicts the south transept portal – Portail de Calende – of Rouen Cathedral, with a view looking west along the Rue du Change towards the cathedral’s Tour de Beurre. Turner used this sketch as the basis of a gouache and watercolour study on blue paper: Tate D24787 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 222) executed around 1832 in relation to the Wanderings by the Seine volume of the Turner’s Annual Tour publication.1

There is a more distance view of the south transept on folio 10 verso (Tate D24519; Turner Bequest CCLVIII 10a), a sketch of the northern transept portal (Portail des Libraires) on folio 10 (D24518; Turner Bequest CCLVIII 10), and there are further architectural studies on folios 11 and 11 verso (Tate D24520 and D24521; Turner Bequest CCLVIII 11, 11a); see folio 1 (Tate D24500; Turner Bequest CCLVIII 1) for references to all of Turner’s sketches of Rouen in this sketchbook.