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

The blue wove paper used for this study, of a type Turner regularly used from his middle years, forms an integral part of the composition. The two bridges, the trees and the more distant buildings to the left were freely painted in watercolour washes with nonetheless careful placing, since the reflection of the nearer bridge and the trees, and the buildings on the far bank, define the full reach of the river, represented by the blue paper and a few light blue watercolour washes. Less pale blue washes and thin applications of white gouache, which both allow the blue paper to make some optical contribution to the surface colour, define the sky. Pigments used include vermilion sometimes combined with lead white for paler pink areas, mid-chrome yellow, yellow and brown ochres combined with black to paint the trees, and possibly cobalt blue. Cobalt blue has a greenish blue tone suitable for a sunlit sky, and Turner used it occasionally for this purpose in watercolour, but far more frequently in oil. In ultraviolet light it has a weak fluorescence, which can serve to identify it when it is used as a pure colour wash.

This colour sketch, formerly thought to depict a scene on the Rivers Meuse or Moselle, has been identified by Turner specialist, Ian Warrell, as a vista of Tours from the banks of the Loire.1 The towers of the Cathedral of Saint-Gaetan are only lightly sketched in pencil on the right-hand side of the sheet, which led to this misidentification. More clearly articulated are the towers of the Old Cathedral, the Tour de Guise, the Logis du Gouverneur, and the ruins of the old Pont Eudes at the centre of the composition.2 The sheet was worked up from a pencil sketch in the Loire, Tours, Orleans and Paris sketchbook which he took on his 1826 tour of Northern France (See entry for Tate D23264 (Turner Bequest CCXLIX 10), perhaps with the failed The English Channel or La Manche print series in mind.3 See the Introduction to this section for a list of comparable studies of the city.

Technical Notes:

The sheet belongs to a batch of blue paper with red fibres used by Turner made by George Steart of Bally, Ellen and Steart at De Montault Mill, Coombe Down, Bath.1

Verso:

Blank