This page contains three distinct sketches: two drawn with the sketchbook held vertically and one horizontally.
The two drawings on the left-hand side, parallel with the left-hand edge of the book, are too rough to be identified but depict views of a mountainous landscape. Similar sketches can be found on folios 3 verso, 4 verso, 5 verso, 9 verso and 10 verso (
D13996,
D13998,
D14000,
D14007 and
D14009), and are interspersed between studies of Paris and St-Cloud. Since they clearly interrupt the logical geographical progression of Turner’s Parisian views, it is likely that they relate to a point much later in the artist’s journey through France and probably depict mountains within Savoy.
The sketch on the right-hand side of the page is part of the topographical composition which has spilled over from the opposite sheet of the double-page spread, see folio 3 (
D13995). The subject is a view of the River Seine in Paris with the Palais-Bourbon and the Pont de la Concorde, and this side shows the right bank of the river.
Nicola Moorby
February 2013
