Saint-Cloud, Île-de-France

1832

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Paris and Environs Sketchbook
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 175 x 127 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D24458
Turner Bequest CCLVII 148 a

Catalogue entry

With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled this page with studies of the environs of Saint-Cloud and Sèvres, located on the Seine some seven miles west of central Paris. This location is identifiable by the sketch in the top right-hand corner of the page depicting one of the two long, arched bridges that traversed the river at this point.1 The hillside gardens and palace at Saint-Cloud feature in the large sketch at the centre of the stage, glimpsed through the narrow trunks of riverside trees. For examples of the watercolours of the environs of Saint-Cloud which Turner worked up with a view to engraved reproduction around this time, see Tate D24688 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 123), D24689 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 124), and D24697 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 132). These culminated in three engravings in the 1835 volume of Turner’s Annual Tour: Wanderings by the Loire and Seine (1833–5; later reissued as Rivers of France), and a further engraved illustration for a new edition of Walter Scott’s Life of Napoleon Buonaparte (1834–36); see Tate T04739, T05618, T05619, and T05620. A list of pages in the present volume featuring Saint-Cloud is provided in the sketchbook Introduction.

John Chu
January 2015

Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, pp.55, 223–28.

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