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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Second Italian Tour 1828-9 > Marseilles to Genoa Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Villefranche-sur-Mer, from the North 1828

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Villefranche-sur-Mer, from the North’ 1828
Folio 11 Recto:
Villefranche-sur-Mer, from the North 1828
D21153
Turner Bequest CCXXXI 11
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 174 mm
Inscribed in red ink ‘11’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCXXXI 11’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner made several sketches of Villefranche-sur-Mer, a harbour town on the south coast of France between Nice and Monaco.1 The geographer and Turner researcher Roland Courtot has identified the viewpoint for this vista, with the page turned horizontally, as the road to Ventimiglia, looking south across the bay with the sea on the left. Standing at the centre of the composition is the sixteenth-century Citadelle St-Elme and the Darse (the Old Harbour), while on the higher slopes to the right is the Baroque church of Saint-Michel and, further right, the Tour de la Darse (tower of the Old Harbour).2 Stretching across the horizon in the far distance is Mont Boron and Mont Alban, and on the far left-hand side, to the east, is part of Cap Ferrat.
For further sketches of Villefranche-sur-Mer see folios 10 verso opposite, and 11 verso–14 verso (D21152, D21154–D21160).

Nicola Moorby
March 2017

Revised by Hannah Kaspar
November 2024

1
Guillaud, Alfrey, Wilton and others 1981, p.286.
2
See Roland Courtot, ‘Les Carnets de William Turner: Recherches d’identification et de localisation des dessins’, unpublished research notes, Université de Provence à Aix, April 2008, p.3, as ‘Villefranche-sur-mer’ (shared with former Tate cataloguer Nicola Moorby in email correspondence at that date).

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Villefranche-sur-Mer, from the North 1828’, catalogue entry, March 2017, revised by Hannah Kaspar, November 2024, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, February 2025, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/villefranche-sur-mer-from-the-north-r1209831, accessed 25 October 2025.