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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Northern France c.1826-32 > Cherbourg, Coutances and Mont St Michel ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Figures in Local Dress; Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy 1826

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Figures in Local Dress; Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy’ 1826
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 23 Verso:
Figures in Local Dress; Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy 1826
D23378
Turner Bequest CCL 23a
Pencil on white laid paper, 131 x 91 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Some Black | or ?Cloak’ top right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner filled the upper part of this page with studies of women in the local dress of Normandy, paying particular attention to their elaborate headdresses. These have been identifies as women on the town of Avranches.1 Having turned the sketchbook horizontally, he also worked views of the island-settlement of Mont Saint-Michel into the lower half of the page. This site is featured on multiple pages in this volume, a list of which is included in the sketchbook introduction. These were subsequently used as the basis for colour studies as Turner worked towards an engraved series of Channel Coast views: see Tate D25342 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 220), D25379 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 256).2

John Chu
May 2015

1
Maurice Guillaud, Nicholas Alfrey, Andrew Wilton and others, Turner en France: aquarelles, peintures, dessins, gravures, carnets de croquis / Turner in France: Watercolours, Paintings, Drawings, Engravings, Sketchbooks, exhibition catalogue, Centre Culturel du Marais, Paris 1981, p.304.
2
Ian Warrell, Turner on the Loire, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1997, pp.158–71.

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Figures in Local Dress; Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy 1826 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-figures-in-local-dress-mont-saint-michel-normandy-r1185219, accessed 25 April 2024.