Aside from a single drawing at Beauvais, the first time Turner had the opportunity or inclination to use his sketchbook on his 1819 tour was in Paris where he broke his journey for at least a day and made a series of topographical sketches.
1 Although he had first visited the French capital in 1802, on this occasion he had concentrated solely on artistic subjects, primarily Old Master paintings in the Louvre (see the
Studies in the Louvre sketchbook, Tate, Turner Bequest LXXII). The 1819 views therefore represent his first on-the-spot studies of the city’s streets and buildings, and also his first response to the River Seine which would become an important theme during the 1830s. The Parisian sketches can be found between folios 2–14 (
D13993–D14013), and record an ordered and logical sequence of movements. Turner first made several studies in the centre of the city, concentrating solely on the right bank of the river as far as the Barrière des Bonhommes at Passy. He then took a short expedition south-west to Sèvres and St-Cloud in the outskirts of the city, before returning and back to Passy again. This sequence, however, is interspersed with a second and unrelated set of drawings depicting mountains, probably relating to the journey through Savoy, see folio 2 verso (
D13994).