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

This page features a sight study of the Tour du Fanal in Marseille, a watchtower positioned at the entrance to the city’s old port. It is surrounded by the ramparts of Fort Saint-Jean, which were also built in the 1660s under Louis XIV. The rectangle in the distance is the medieval tower of the church of Saint-Laurent, while the tower to the right is the fifteenth-century Tour du Roi René. Turner’s elevated vantage point is likely from the Pointe du Pharo on the other side of the port.

A more architecturally detailed rendering of the Tour du Fanal appears earlier in the sketchbook on folio 53 recto (D21092; Turner Bequest CCXXX 52), where a general commentary on Turner’s visit to Marseille can also be found, together with a list of comparable works in the sketchbook.

This subject also appears in two later studies by Turner in watercolour and gouache (Tate D24704 and D29025; Turner Bequest CCLIX 139 and CCXCII 74), the latter of which Finberg’s 1909 Inventory of the Bequest initially misattributed to the artist’s Meuse-Moselle-Rhine tour from around 1834.1