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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Tancarville Castle ?1829

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 48 Verso:
Tancarville Castle ?1829
D23793
Turner Bequest CCLIII 48a
Pencil on pale cream laid paper, 107 x 156 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The page contains a rough sketch, drawn horizontally, of castle buildings on the edge of a hillside. Finberg identified this sketch as ‘Tancarville Castle’,1 and this location has been confirmed.2 Turner appears to give an indication of the machicolated top of the structure known as the Coquesart tower, on the far right, and a rough notion of the pointed towers at centre. He also indicates the sea beyond with faint horizontal lines. (For further information on the castle, see under folio 46 recto, D23788.)
Art historian Ian Warrell states3 that this drawing (as well as folio 49 recto opposite, D23794, and folio 52 verso; D23801) was used as a preliminary sketch for Turner’s later watercolour, The Castle at Tancarville, Normandy, c.1832 (Tate D24595; Turner Bequest CCLIX 30). The viewpoint is also similar to that of another watercolour of about the same date, The Tour Coquesart at Tancarville, Normandy (Tate D24721; Turner Bequest CCLIX 156).

Caroline South
May 2017

1
Finberg 1909, II, p.770.
2
?Ian Warrell, ‘Turner on the Seine: Topographical Index’, c.1999, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain (printout in copy of Warrell 1999), p.5.
3
Warrell 1999, p.273 no.120.

How to cite

Caroline South, ‘Tancarville Castle ?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-tancarville-castle-r1195699, accessed 28 March 2024.