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

Turner journeyed through France and northern Italy by diligence, a public stagecoach where the luggage was kept covered by canvas on the roof. Described as the ‘cheapest, and perhaps the most convenient for men of business and single gentlemen,1 these large horse-drawn vehicles followed prescribed routes between staging posts and connected most of the major towns in France. Fares could be booked ahead in stages and it is likely that Turner arranged his travel in Calais, Paris, Lyon and Chambéry respectively.2 Each coach could carry up to fourteen passengers and in the French diligence there were four places for people to sit: the coupé, or front compartment of the interior, generally believed to be the most desirable location; the berline, or middle part of the interior; the rotonde, or back of the interior, the least recommended placing, described by one guidebook as a ‘receptacle of dust, dirt and bad company’; and finally, the banquette or imperial, which was outside at the front of the carriage above the coupé.3

This sketch depicts a diligence with a mixed group of men and women waiting beside it, presumably Turner’s fellow travellers waiting to set off for the day. The location is unknown although in this part of the sketchbook the subjects tend to alternate between views on the River Saône (where the artist was journeying by boat) and mountainous scenery (possibly the ascent to the Pass of Mont Cenis). The study may therefore have been drawn during the latter. For an inscription by Turner concerning a conversation in a diligence see folio 2 (D13992). Sketches of these vehicles frequently feature within Turner’s European sketchbooks (see for example Tate D13010; Turner Bequest CLXII 8) and he even made them the subject of a couple of watercolours.4