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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > First Italian Tour 1819-20 > Paris, France, Savoy 2 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Neuville-sur-Saône from a Boat on the River Saône 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Neuville-sur-Saône from a Boat on the River Saône’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 43 Recto:
Neuville-sur-Saône from a Boat on the River Saône 1819
D14057
Turner Bequest CLXXIII 43
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 185 mm
Stamped in black ‘CLXXIII 43’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner travelled between Chalon-sur-Saône and Lyon by boat, probably in a sailing vessel known as a coche d’eau, or water diligence, see folio 38 (D14051). According to contemporary guidebooks the road diligence (a large public carriage) from Paris connected at Chalon with a daily service and this made a pleasanter journey to Lyon than by land.1 This sketch has been drawn from on board the deck of the boat with a group of fellow passengers assembled near the prow. The town visible in the background is identifiable as Neuville-sur-Saône which lies on the left bank of the River Saône approximately nine miles north of Lyon. The most easily recognisable landmark is the Church of Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption which has two seventeenth-century bell towers and can be seen on the right-hand side of the composition.

Nicola Moorby
March 2013

1
See for example, Heinrich August O. Reichard, A Descriptive Road Book of France, London 1829, pp.101–2, and Mariana Starke, Travels on the Continent between the Years 1824 and 1828 Written for the Use and Particular Information of Travellers, London 1828, p.458.

How to cite

Nicola Moorby, ‘Neuville-sur-Saône from a Boat on the River Saône 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-neuville-sur-saone-from-a-boat-on-the-river-saone-r1142915, accessed 23 September 2024.