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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Monument or Tower and Classical Building 1845

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Monument or Tower and Classical Building’ 1845
Folio 11 Verso:
?The Place de la Concorde, Paris, with the Luxor Obelisk and Buildings at the Northern End c.1845
D35355
Turner Bequest CCCLV 11a
Chalk and pencil on blue wove paper, 70 x 186 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[... | ?in Sun]’ towards top left and ‘[...]’ top right, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The drawing has been produced with the page turned horizontally. It is a rough sketch of the basic features of what appears to be a town, the most prominent being a low colonnaded building at the centre and the beginnings of a vertical structure to the left. There is an inscription across the top of this structure. The two loosely scalloped lines to the right of the composition may suggest trees in the foreground. There is a further inscription at a right angle to the main drawing.
The sketch relates to the more detailed urban prospect on folio 12 recto opposite (D35356), which has been identified by Ian Warrell as showing the Place de la Concorde in central Paris.1 There, the viewpoint is the east side of the square, ranging south-west across the River Seine and north-westw to the Luxor Obelisk. The latter feature may be on the left here, suggesting that this is a continuation to the right of the other view, with the loosely drawn structures towards the centre here being the classical façades at the northern end of the square. See under D35356 for discussion of dating, which may be some years earlier than this sketchbook’s traditional overall date of 1845.

Alice Rylance-Watson
February 2013

Revised by Matthew Imms
September 2025

1
See Ian Warrell, Turner’s Sketchbooks, London 2014, p.12.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘?The Place de la Concorde, Paris, with the Luxor Obelisk and Buildings at the Northern End c.1845’, catalogue entry, February 2013, revised by Matthew Imms, September 2025, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, June 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/the-place-de-la-concorde-paris-with-the-luxor-obelisk-and-buildings-at-the-northern-end-r1142186, accessed 11 July 2026.