J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

This perspectival street view is dominated by the dramatic shading around the central vertical axis. It suggests a crevice of light between the tall buildings, perhaps with a tunnel or bridge beneath. The location is unknown, although it possibly relates to one of Turner’s many visits to France. The composition bears a certain resemblance to the narrow street views Turner produced in Rouen in around 1832, notably Tate D24822 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 257), a perspective of the Grand Horloge with the cathedral rising behind.

While A. J. Finberg’s 1909 Inventory of the Turner Bequest does not specifically list this verso, the sheet is grouped among numerous sketches on blue paper, ‘mostly very slight in character’ and likely depicting French or possibly northern Italian subjects.1 As Finberg noted, John Ruskin dismissed most of the sheets in the bundle numbered CCLXI 1–128 as ‘Chalk scrawls on grey. Rubbish’.2 See the Introduction for general remarks on this grouping.

The recto, a sketch of a river valley with sailing boats, is D25026 (Turner Bequest CCLXI 54).