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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Northern France 1832 > Seine and Paris Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris 1832

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris’ 1832
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 23 Recto:
Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris 1832
D23925
Turner Bequest CCLIV 23
Pencil on white wove paper, 174 x 117 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Galot’ towards top left, ‘Br ?Dabadic | LII’ towards bottom left, ‘?Famille | Durvey s[..] M[..]yville’ centre right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘23’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLIV – 23’ bottom, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sketchbook turned horizontally, Turner filled this page with a view taken at the hillside Père-Lachaise Cemetery some two miles east of central Paris. 1 Special attention has been paid on the left-hand side of the page to the neoclassical tombs typical of this relatively recent foundation (1804). One of these monuments is identified by Turner’s note as the Galot family mausoleum. Art historian Ian Warrell recognised that the pediment with a round decoration just to the right of tall obelisk belongs to the sepulchre of Moina de Salligny, Marquise de Damatie. The many studies of Père-Lachaise in this sketchbook culminated in an engraved illustration for a new edition of Walter Scott’s Life of Napoleon Buonaparte (1834–6); see Tate impression T04744.
A list of pages in the sketchbook featuring Père-Lachaise is provided in the entry for folio 24 verso (D23928; Turner Bequest 24a).

John Chu
July 2014

1
Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, pp.54, 243–6.

How to cite

John Chu, ‘Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris 1832 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-pere-lachaise-cemetery-paris-r1173330, accessed 04 April 2026.