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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Normandy ?1829 > Tancarville and Lillebonne Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner La Chaire de Gargantua, near Duclair ?1829

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘La Chaire de Gargantua, near Duclair’ ?1829
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 69 Verso:
La Chaire de Gargantua, near Duclair ?1829
D23835
Turner Bequest CCLIII 69a
Pencil on pale cream laid paper, 107 x 156 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Giants Chair | Du C’ towards bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The page contains a sketch, drawn horizontally, of high rocky features on a riverbank. Finberg identified this page as ‘La Chaire de Gargantua, near Duclair’, and compared the engraving noted below.1 This location has been confirmed.2 Turner’s inscription ‘Giants Chair, Du C’ appears at the lower left of the sketch and would correspond with his making a note of the site, located near the town of Duclair. (For further information on the ‘Chaire’ see under folio 68 verso; D23833.) This is the last in a series of three sketches (folios 68 verso–69 verso; D23833–D23835) in which Turner concentrates on the shape of the rocky structure.
Art historian Ian Warrell notes3 that this page (as well as folio 67 verso, D23831, and D23833–D23834) was used as a preliminary sketch for Turner’s later watercolour, La Chaire de Gargantua, near Duclair, c.1832 (Tate D24671; Turner Bequest CCLIX 106),4 which was engraved for Turner’s Annual Tour – Wanderings by the Seine, 1834 (Tate impressions: T05603, T06233).

Caroline South
May 2017

1
Finberg 1909, II, p.771.
2
Wilton 1975, p.120 no.191; Wilton 1979, p.413 no.962; Warrell, 1999, pp.162, 275 no.128; ?Ian Warrell, ‘Turner on the Seine: Topographical Index’, c.1999, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain (printout in copy of Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999), p.2.
3
Warrell 1999, p.275 no.128; see also Wilton 1979, p.413 under no.962.
4
Wilton 1979, p.413 no.962, reproduced.

How to cite

Caroline South, ‘La Chaire de Gargantua, near Duclair ?1829 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2017, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-la-chaire-de-gargantua-near-duclair-r1195741, accessed 21 July 2025.