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

Having left behind the city of Nîmes, Turner travelled eastwards by carriage towards Beaucaire and Tarascon, two towns that face each other across the Rhône. The geographer and Turner researcher Roland Courtot has identified the two upper sketches as variant perspectives of the Château de Tarascon, a fifteenth-century fortress on the left bank of the Rhône.1 Turner’s viewpoint is from across the river in Beaucaire, looking eastwards. Beneath is a larger sketch of the Château de Beaucaire, seen towards the west. All three studies were executed with the sketchbook turned upside down. Several studies of Beaucaire and Tarascon appear between folios 50 recto and 52 recto (D21086–D21090; Turner Bequest CCXXX 49–51).