Joseph Mallord William Turner

The Sauvenière spring is located in woodland approximately two miles east of Spa. The site was presided over by ‘a substantial three-storeyed house’, the Turner scholar Cecilia Powell writes, which was ‘linked to the Sauvenière spring by an arcade similar to that found at Géronstère’ (Tate D28079; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 19 a, for example).1 In this sketch Turner has mapped out the landscape roughly with loose pencil markings: vertical strokes of the pencil representing trees which line a path in front of the Sauvenière house. The artist has inscribed ‘Savon’, an abbreviation of Sauvenière, at the bottom right of the sheet.

Sauvenière and Groesbeck, a spring just a few yards away, are depicted on the verso of this sheet (Tate D28084; Turner Bequest CCLXXXVII 22a). The present sketch formed the basis for a gouache, pen and ink and watercolour drawing on blue paper (Tate D24780; Turner Bequest CCLIX 215).