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

This page depicts the Maison Carrée or ‘square house’, a Roman temple in central Nîmes. It was constructed in the first century AD to commemorate the prematurely deceased heirs of the Emperor Augustus, and is today regarded as one of the best-preserved examples of its kind. As noted by Cecilia Powell, Turner’s sketches of Nîmes demonstrate his interest in its grand monuments, and this sketch of the Maison Carrée is particularly reminiscent of the studies of Roman buildings he produced on his 1819–20 Italian tour.1

Here, Turner’s viewpoint is from the square, looking north-west towards the back of the temple. The Maison Carrée is a hexastyle temple with fluted Corinthian columns, but these architectural features are not immediately evident from Turner’s economic rendering. Apart from one more defined column at the south-east corner, most of the columns are omitted. The capitals, entablature and triangular pediment above are more clearly articulated. Reproduced on a larger scale in the top-left corner is a detail of the Corinthian capital, showing the fluted column and the overlapping acanthus leaves terminating in scrolls. To the left is a section of the entablature. Turner returned to this subject on the verso (D21079; Turner Bequest CCXXX 45a), sketching the temple portico from a closer vantage point.

To the left of the Maison Carrée, in the distance, is a building that no longer exists. The Grand Theatre was built in 1800 but burnt down in the mid twentieth century. The site is now occupied by the glass structure of the Carré d’Art, a contemporary art gallery designed by Norman Foster and built in the 1990s.

For a general commentary on Turner’s visit to Nîmes and a list of comparable works in the sketchbook, see under folio 44 verso (D21075; Turner Bequest CCXXX 43a).