Joseph Mallord William Turner

The Palais des Tuileries and the Arc du Carrousel, Paris

c.1833

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Loose Studies of Paris and the Seine
Medium
Gouache and watercolour on paper
Dimensions
Support: 140 × 195 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D24752
Turner Bequest CCLIX 187

Catalogue entry

Turner worked gouache and watercolour paints onto this sheet of blue paper to depict the eastern façade of the now-lost Palais des Tuileries on the right bank of the Seine. The Napoleonic Arc du Carrousel is featured towards the right-hand side of the scene while uniformed troops line up around its base. Art historian Ian Warrell has identified a drawing in the Paris and Environs sketchbook as the basis for this composition: see Tate D24486 (Turner Bequest CCLVII 162a).1 The existence of the present colour study suggests that Turner considered the subject as an illustration for Turner’s Annual Tour: Wanderings by the Loire and Seine (1833–5; later reissued as Rivers of France) or the new edition of Walter Scott’s Life of Napoleon Buonaparte (1834–36) although the monument did not make it into either publication in the event.2
1
Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, p.272.
2
W[illiam] G[eorge] Rawlinson, The Engraved Work of J.M.W. Turner, R.A., London 1908, vol.II, pp.264–76 nos.453–92, 288–92 nos.525–39.
Verso:
The centre of the sheet is inscribed in pencil with the note ‘90’.

John Chu
August 2014

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