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

The page contains a sketch, drawn horizontally, of two boats on the river with high rocky riverbanks and buildings beyond. Finberg noted it as ‘View on river’,1 but the location has been further specified as Canteleu,2 a town on the River Seine to the north-west of the city of Rouen. Turner’s inscription at lower right appears to read either ‘Rouen Ct’ or ‘Rouen Canteleu’. Art historian Ian Warrell notes that in his sketches of this area Turner depicts boats such as these ‘shallow punts with gondola-like, enclosed seating areas, which seem to have been a feature of the river’.3

Warrell also states4 that Turner referred to this page and folio 77 verso (D23851), to supplement folio 74 recto (D23844) as the preliminary sketch for his later watercolour, Shipping at Canteleu, Normandy, c.1832 (Tate D24643; Turner Bequest CCLIX 78). In the watercolour, Turner has replaced the punts with sailing boats but retained the positions of the church tower buildings at top and left, although in the sketch the structure at far left may be a sailing boat but is rendered too indistinctly to be certain.