Turner worked gouache and watercolour paints over this ink drawing to depict the Saint-Sever district of Rouen, Normandy on the left bank of the Seine. Passers-by and rows of uniformed figures occupy the elegant avenue in the foreground while, in the distance, the cathedral’s towers and pinnacles rise above city centre. This is one of seven colour studies of Rouen which Turner worked up around this date with a view to potential publication; see Tate
D24714 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 149), Tate
D24727 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 162), Tate
D24787 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 222), Tate
D24811 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 246), Tate
D24819 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 254), Tate
D24822 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 257). Art historian Ian Warrell has identified a pencil sketch in the
Dieppe, Rouen and Paris sketchbook as the source for the present study: see Tate
D24532 (Turner Bequest CCLVIII 17).
1 For the finished watercolours of the city in the Turner Bequest, see Tate
D24672–D24674 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 107–109). All this activity culminated in three engravings in the 1834 volume of
Turner’s Annual Tour: Wanderings by the Loire and Seine (1833–5; later reissued as
Rivers of France); see Tate impressions
T05604,
T05605,
T05607.
